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Lookiiio- Down from Mt. Mitchell 



THE 

HILLS O' CA'LINY 



By 
ARTHUR W. SPALDING 



Review and Herald Publishing Association 
takoma park, washington, d. c. 

PEEKSKILL, N. T. SOUTH BEND, IND. 

(Printed in, V. S. A.) 



.5^ 



Copyright, 1921 
Review & Herald Publisliing Association 



JAN -7 1922 

g)C!.A654l66 

-V. f 



CONTENTS 

Among Mine Own People - - 7 

The Land of the Sky - - 27 

The State of Religion - - 43 

The Path to Pisgah - - 67 

The House of Rest - - - 91 

Christy, Kith and Kin - - 109 

The Summer People - - - 133 

The Lake Country - - - 149 

Children of the Rechabites - 177 




±1. Cacauin 



Old Man Douglas 

A brave old man, though a garrulous, and a 
good old man withal." 



^ 



Among Mine Own People 

'' No, brother, I reckon I ain't a travelin' 
out West jist yit. The's heaps o' young 
fellers as thinks they kin make ther fortin 
out thar, an' hit may be they kin; but 
from all I hear tell, the's mighty little hu- 
man kindness amongst 'em-all out thar, 
— jist a-pushin' an' a-crowdin' ter make 
ther own way. I was borned seventy-six 
year ago in the big log house down yan- 
der, an' my ol' woman was borned jist 
over the gap. We was raised up here, an' 
I reckon we-all 'ull stay in these hills o' 
Ca'liny till they opens up to take in the ol' 
bones. We-all air like the woman o' Scrip- 
tur, y' ricollict: we dwell amongst our 
own people." 

The first trace I came upon of Old Man 
Douglas was a home-printed sign that 



8 Hills o' Ca'liny 

faced me at the turning of a lane, a sign 
of quaint character and quaint phrase: 

'' NOTIS 
'' All Persons are hereby notified not to tres- 
pass on or thru this Land at nite with Dogs or 
guns or otherwise atween the hours of Sun Set 
and Sun Rise at ther own Risk by the Strenth 
of My Arms and the Contence of a Bubble Bar- 
rel Shot Gun. 

'' This the 1 Day of Sept 1909. 

" J. B. Douglas." 

The vision of a tall, raw-boned, steely- 
eyed mountaineer came up before me. I 
did not trespass. Though it was not be- 
tween the hours of sunset and sunrise, and 
though I had neither dog nor gun, yet pos- 
sibly the broad legislative mind which 
framed that law might hold I had '' other- 
wise;" and being on a peaceable errand, 
I would not invite war. A little farther 
on, I found a driveway that led up to the 
old man's house, and so I came upon him 
— a surprise. Gaunt indeed he was, but 



Among Mine Own People 9 

shorter than I, who am no Goliath; and 
his deep blue eyes, which age could not yet 
fade, were as kindly as my mother's. Yet 
I could see through their twinkling the 
gleaming of a fire that would not uni- 
formly remain hidden, and it took no great 
stretch of imagination to be looking along 
a blue barrel into eyes gone steely gray. 

Much of the lore of the mountain coun- 
try had he at his tongue's end: how the 
road that ran hj his house was the oldest 
in the country^ being made along the old 
Indian trail from Hickorynut Gap in the 
Blue Ridge, down to the canoe path of the 
French Broad ; how the old log house) in 
which he was born (now clapboarded and 
called a hotel), was one of the four this 
side the Ridge that stood for civilization a 
hundred years ago; and many a tale, had 
I had time to hear, of war and revenue, 
bushwhacking and moonshining.; 

And, like almost all his kind, he was 
comparatively well versed in Scripture. 



10 Hills o' Ca'liny 

He was the first of many I have found 
through these mountains whose wisdom in 
gospel and prophecy exceeds that of many 
of their ministers. 

The ministry, indeed, is in a curious 
state. Too few to reach all the widely 
scattered settlements, not to speak of the 
lonely cabins, the ministers have divided 
as much as they can compass into circuits 
from ten to a hundred miles in length, 
along which the itinerant preacher rides, 
reaching each station perhaps once a month. 
This system of circuit-riding, originating 
in Methodism and copied by others under 
the same conditions, is familiar enough to 
us in the early history of the Middle West, 
and it yet survives in the mountains. But 
the country preachers now are largely 
young men, just out from the little moun- 
tain sectarian ''college" (another survi- 
val), or else graduates of larger theological 
schools, passing here a novitiate before 
succeeding to higher positions. Thus they 



i 

Among Mine Own People 11 

make a mixture of smatterers and stu- 
dents, with differing faiths of dogmatism 
and radicalism, a state confusing to the 
keen though unsophisticated mind of the 
mountaineer, who at once reveres the 
higher learning and rebels against the lib- 
eralism of many of his spiritual advisers. 

More popular with him is the scarcer 
type of preacher, largely self-taught, who 
has diligently thumbed his Bible, vaguely 
groping with untutored Anglo-Celtic ap- 
prehension in the jurisprudence and the 
imagery of the Oriental. " Old Pap Som- 
ers," he may be, or ^^ Preacher James;" 
and though, jealous of his prerogatives, he 
may have '' Rev.'' stenciled on his rural 
mail box for the awing of chance visitors, 
yet among his own people he must be con- 
tent with the more familiar, and indeed 
the more endearing, sobriquet. 

But apart from the professed preachers 
are the old men who, shut up to the Bible 
library, have made themselves familiar 



12 Hills o' Ca'liny 

with its pages, who love to argue and to 
exhort, and who often therefrom feel their 
Celtic blood stirring them to fill the pro- 
phetic office, and from dreams and sym- 
bolic visions predict impossible futures. 

Of such was my friend Old Man Doug- 
las, he of the flowing white whiskers and 
the mild, dangerous blue eyes. Surer and 
truer, indeed, was he upon the revelation 
of the Apocalypse than many a spry young 
sprig of the pulpit; and the wonders of 
the day, of which he had heard through 
his weekly newspaper or the widespread 
gossip of the cabins and the crossroads 
store — these spelled to him, as they must 
to the broader mind, the coming dissolu- 
tion of the world. 

But '' other-worldliness '^ was not a vice 
with him. Though ever ready to converse 
upon religion, he was, it appeared as I 
met him now and then afterward, a master 
hand at giving advice to neighbors. And 
he had a lively interest in affairs great and 



Among Mine Own People 18 

small. As his '' Notis '' might indicate, 
he had had plenty of experience with dog 
and gun, and in his memory carried tri- 
umphant trophies of foot race and wrest- 
ling bout. 

'' Doc Williams,'' said he one day, out 
on the road, talking to me and a waylaid 
mule driver, '^ Doc Williams an' me growed 
up together in these parts. He's two years 
younger'n me, but city life sho' does tell 
on anybody. I seed him up at Asheville 
yesterday was a week ago, an' says I, 
' Come oh now, Doc, an' I'll wrassle ye, 
right here on the grass.' An' d'ye think 
he would? Nary bit. He knowed I could 
down him yit, if my old bones air over the 
threescore-an'-ten-year line." And his rosy 
face, framed in white from forehead to 
chin, glowed around the smile his surviving 
prowess begot. A brave old man, though a 
garrulous, and a good old man withal, with 
his well-thumbed Bible and his kindly eye 
and his human smile, with the '' Strenth " 



14 Hills o' Ca^liny 

of his good right '^ Arm " and the " Con- 
tence of a Bubble Barrel Shot Gun." 

'^Among mine own people " — the phrase 
stays with me, and I find myself echoing 
the sentiment as I trudge the stony roads, 
as I enter the mansion, the farmhouse, and 
the cabin alike, as I answer the hearty 
farewell of an acquaintance of half an 
hour, '' Good-by, brother!'' For every- 
where it is '' brother/' The distant '' stran- 
ger " of the West, the '' neighbor " of the 
garrulous Yankee, even the " friend " of 
the Quaker, are stricken to shame before 
the kindliness of the mountain salutation, 
^^ Good-by, brother. Vv ish you mighty 
luck." 

And something there is that gives the 
feeling of kin. Who, indeed, would not be 
proud of the kindred of the American 
mountaineer? Kin he is, indeed, to all of 
English America. Pure stock of the Brit- 
ish Isles, Saxon and Celt, he has fed the 
streams of Western emigration from be- 



Among Mine Own People 15 

fore the times of the Revolution. Through 
these mountains, and from them, poured 
the stream that peopled Tennessee and 
Kentucky, surged sidewise north of the 
Ohio and south into Georgia, Alabama, and 
Mississippi, found a vent through Missouri, 
and later infused its blood into the wide 
West, and fastened there many of its cus- 
toms and habits of thought. 

Indeed, there is nothing greatly to dis- 
tinguish the mountaineer from other peo- 
ples, except the effects of his accidental 
environment. And this environment dif- 
fers from the common lot, in any appreci- 
able degree, only as we get back from the 
railroads and centers of trade and culture. 
Come into the mountain country, enter the 
cities, go out upon the farms in the fer- 
tile valleys: you have all about you the 
same stock that peopled the mountains; 
you are among the mountaineers. But you 
find them a familiar type; they are simply 
the English Americans you find every- 



16 Hills o' Ca'liny 

where, East, North, and West. Go any- 
where, indeed, among the mountains where 
education, business, and culture have found 
a place, and unless you are a romanticist 
or a critic, determined to seek peculiarities 
through microscopic eyes, you will not find 
yourself in strange conditions or among 
curious people. Your neighbor may have 
certain little habits and ways of doing 
things which are odd to you, but so, for 
that matter, are your ways odd to him. 
There is no standard of social forms ex- 
cept that of the majority, and being in the 
minority, you, and not your neighbor, are 
by all rights the proper subject for museum 
honors. 

It is well, then, to remember that the 
mountaineer is divided into classes which 
do not permit the same generalizations. 
The big-valley dweller and the city dweller 
are the typical prosperous English-Amer- 
icans; the little valleys and the hills hold 
a class whose opportunities may not have 



Among Mine Own People 17 

permitted for them such thorough inter- 
course and acquaintance with the world, 
but yet who fully equal the average rural 
population of many Northern States; be- 
yond these is a third class, in isolated coves, 
on high table-lands difficult of access, or 
out upon the mountains (and, for that 
matter, in many sections of the piedmont 
and the lowlands), who are almost com- 
pletely cut off from the world's progress. 
It is this latter type, chiefly, that has 
become familiar to the reading public as 
'' the mountaineer." If he could be set 
apart by language, or religion, or decided 
peculiarities of custom, from his brethren 
of the valleys, and provided with a name 
which would clearly differentiate him, he 
might be written about with no offense to 
those more fortunate ones who still are ac- 
corded with him the proud title of '' moun- 
taineer." But the fact is, there is no such 
distinct line. The three classes I have sug- 
gested might as well be a hundred; for the 




Photo by Kugene J . Hall 

The Old Spinning Wheel 

18 



Among Mine Own People 19 

differences are finely graded, and interrela- 
tions of blood and life are so close that a 
President of the United States — like Abra- 
ham Lincoln — may own his cousins by 
the score back on Hominy Creek. 

It is the isolated and uneducated moun- 
taineer that has made the most picturesque 
figure in literature, chiefly because he rep- 
resents ideals and limitations of thought 
which we left — whether to our profit or 
our loss — with our great-grandfathers. 
But even with him, I am not so sure of my 
superiority in knowledge or in ethics. I 
may have absorbed more of popular science 
than he, but science, unsupported, is only 
the conclusions of certain men, and he may 
choose his own standard of learning rather 
than theirs. Science tells me many things 
which, to take its own principle, I myself 
reserve the right to doubt. I do not believe 
this earth was one hundred million years 
in the making, because my Bible tells me 
God made it in six days. For this the evo- 



20 Hills o' Ca'liny 

lutionist counts me a funny ignoramus; 
but I only laugh in my sleeve at him, being- 
certain that another hundred years, were 
the world to stand that long, would make 
his present conceited ignorance the laugh- 
ingstock. But then what right have I to 
deride my neighbor Andrews, who grows 
wrathful when his children in school are 
taught that the world is round and re- 
volving? — for Joshua told the sun to stand 
still ! To be sure, I can demonstrate to my 
own satisfaction the follies of evolution, 
and find abundant harmony between the 
literal statements of the Bible and rational 
science. But so also can Brother Andrews 
prove to his own satisfaction — and evi- 
dent pleasure — that '' the sun do move." 
Perhaps it does. 

I think it best for me to be duly humble 
before the opinions of other men, unless I 
can give them the Word of God for cor- 
rective truth. And then, I find it so much 
more comfortable and interesting to go 



Among Mine Own People 21 

about listening, without having either to 
combat or ridicule. I was talking with 
Uncle Peter Carroll one day about '' the 
great earthquake '' — the Charleston earth- 
quake — which shook these mountains. He 
described vividly his experience and sen- 
sations that night, and then touched upon 
the effects of the earthquake. 

1^' Hit used to be a heap colder," he as- 
serted. ^' I ricollict we uster drive acrost 
the creeks with wagons the hull winter 
through, an' the snow piled up jist this-a- 
way " (with a swift upward movement of 
the hands), ^^ but we don't have no sich 
winters now. No, suh. The great uth- 
quake done hit. Now I don't know^ nothin' 
about hit; I hain't no eddication in sich 
things ; but there be fellers — astronomers, 
they call 'em — thet says thet uthquake 
moved this hull country a hundred miles 
south. Yes, suh! " ^ 

'' 1 never heard of such a thing," I 
meekly said. 



22 Hills o' Ca'liny 

^^Well, I don^t know/' he replied, ^^ I 
ain't no astronomer; but I do know hit's a 
heap warmer. We uster have sleighin' the 
hull winter through, an' we uster have 
ice, but we don't no more, fer more'n a 
day or two. An' the land's mighty po' 
now, too. Hit uster be mighty good. 
Cropped too much? No, suh, thet ain't hit. 
New land jist like the old. An' the peaches 
don't hit no more, because hit thaws up 
an' then hit freezes, an' hit thaws an' 
freezes, an' freezes 'em out. An' the' ain't 
much else thet hits, nuther."^ 

So he piled the evidence up, until it be- 
gan indeed to appear that in this star- 
tlingly scientific assertion the astronomers 
must be right. And what was I before the 
astronomers! I put Uncle Peter Carroll 
beside Old Man Douglas, as one I should 
like to have for my forebear. 

Yes, something there is that makes the 
call of kin come reaching through with its 
soft fingers to touch the heartstrings till 



Among Mine Own People 23 

they echo to the words, " He hath made 
of one blood/' There is in the average 
mountaineer a reserve united with an 
openness that compels you to say, '' Here 
is a man that might be a friend/' His home 
is open to you, though it be but a one-room 
cabin; his board has a place for the stran- 
ger/ '' ef you-all kin eq'al our fare; " and if 
you throw aside your reserve and make 
yourself one in the firelit circle, you will 
find him a good listener, and often a good 
talker, while still you feel there lie depths 
beyond your present probing. 

These mountaineers of the far hills have 
well been called '^ our contemporary an- 
cestors ; '' for some phase of every epoch of 
the past two centuries may be found in their 
lives. Here is the windowless log cabin of 
the first pioneer, with the ax that hewed it 
out and the gun that defends it; yonder is 
the ox team of the second generation, with 
even the rough cart whose two wheels were 
sawed from a huge log; and, stretching in 



24 Hills o' Ca'liny 

trains from the metropolis for fifty miles 
along the pikes and paths, are seen the 
white-topped ^' prairie schooners.'^ ■ The 
spinning wheel and the loom are still busy 
in the cabins, and the majority of house- 
wives still swing their pork and beans to 
cook over the rude kitchen fireplace, and set 
the corn bread to bake in the ^' baking ket- 
tle " buried in coals upon the hearth. The 
habits of life and thought are largely those 
of a century ago; and the speech is en- 
riched, not marred, with many an expres- 
sion which, uncouth to our modern ears, 
would have been power and elegance to our 
fathers of three hundred years ago. 

And when I think of the history of this 
people, of the dauntless pioneering, of the 
heroic daring and suffering in civil war, 
of deeds of generous chivalry and of black 
revenge — a people striving with little help 
to feel and hold the high ideals of the noble 
race from which they sprung, I am glad 
that my feet have come to tread the rocky 



Among Mine Own People 25 

roads and the dim trails that lie between 
the lonely cabins and the settlements; and, 
in the thought of service, I am content to 
say, though king may call to court, or priest 
to benefice, '' I dwell among mine own 
people." 




Photo by Euyeiic o. iiali 



Autumn 



" The trees, releassd from the summer's campaign, were 
hastening to doff their uniforms of green." 



26 



The Land of the Sky 

Those beautiful October days when I 
trudged the winding roads and climbed the 
steep ascents to carry the Book to villa and 
to hovel, — ah, how they troop along my 
glad memory with their delightsome 
warmth and haze and color ! The woods in 
their colors, in places how gorgeous; in 
broad landscapes how restful to the eye! 
The trees, released from their summer's 
campaign, were hastening to doff their uni- 
forms of green, and to trick themselves out 
in all the brightness of civilian dress, as 
suited each fancy. Hastiest of all, the 
sourwood appeared in vivid red, then the 
aristocratic poplars in their yellow green; 
the sturdy hickories followed with a 
brighter yellow, and the maples came hard 
after with all their mingled colors. And 



28 Hills o' Ca'liny 

lastly the oaks, as though reluctant to part 
company with their comrades, the pines, 
slowly splashed themselves with color, all 
shades of red and brown dashing them- 
selves upon the green. The mountain side 
glowed at last in brightness, like a great 
picture hung by the Creator against the 
sky. Slowly it faded as the days went on ; 
but in memory it lives still. 

But the sky ! The sky can never be for- 
gotten. Long ago this country was chris- 
tened by a writer who had caught some of 
its glory, '' The Land of the Sky.'^ And 
surely, if anywhere, then here, may be 
heeded Ruskin's words: '^ The sky is for 
all. Bright as it is, it is not too bright 
nor good for human nature's daily food; it 
is fitted in all its functions for the perpet- 
ual comfort and exalting of the heart, for 
soothing it and purifying it from its dross 
and dusf 

Blue as with the dust of the amethysts 
of heaven, the great dome, when clear, is 



The Land of the Sky 29 

our purest earnest of the coming kingdom. 
There is nothing that so carries the soul 
away as to lie upon the back and gaze far, 
far, and farther into the depths of the blue 
sky. The great expanse seems to deepen, 
to open before the eye like the sea at Pi- 
hahiroth before the sweeping wind of God; 
the imagination is carried away with the 
vast infinitude of space; we seem to be al- 
ready winging our flight of eternity to un- 
counted worlds. A keen delight steals over 
the soul, a delight incomparable, in my 
mind, with any other sensation than that 
sense of God's nearness when through Jesus 
He forgives our sins. 

Then over the mountains there climb up 
great masses of billowy white clouds. What 
is there in white masses that so attracts the 
artist within us? When I was a boy, the 
thick, up-piled soapsuds in the washtub had 
a fascination for me; and I used to gaze 
longingly at the pictures in the geography 
of heaps of white cotton with grinning 



30 Hills 0^ Ca^iny 

black pickaninnies sporting about in it. A 
flock of sheep on a green hillside holds our 
eyes longer than a mottled herd. The sea 
is never so glorious as when the green bil- 
lows are capped with white crests. And 
the death of winter is sanctified, beautified, 
by the mantle of snow that drapes itself 
over the ugliness of naked nature. 

But when the eye leaps from earth to 
sky, to behold the clouds, it is as looking 
from beauty to glory. One finds himself 
involuntarily wondering, as the thunder- 
heads roll up, how on such slender bases 
the great domes can be reared. They 
gather; they roll; they multiply; they 
change from a hundred formations to 
a thousand; they lose their whiteness; 
they darken; they blacken; they mutter 
and thunder; and the storm bursts over 
the land. 

But what serene, sweet mornings, with 
the sprinkled cirrus coaxing away the 
blackness of night from the face of the sky ! 



The Land of the Sky 31 

How the light cloud wisps are touched into 
rose with the early beams of the sun from 
behind the mountains! How the colors 
mingle as the age-old miracle is worked by 
the climbing sovereign — purple and white, 
rose and gold; pedestal and pinnacle glow- 
ing and fading, until the heart goes out in 
the prayer: 

'* Clothe me in the rose tints of Thy skies, 
Upon morning summits laid, 
Robe me in the purple and gold that flies 
Through Thy shuttles of Hght and shade." 

It is not the heavens alone that seem to 
make appropriate the title, '' The Land of 
the Sky/' These pastured hills, these for- 
est-covered mountains, are, it seems to me, 
more like the mountains of heaven than any 
others earth affords. No jagged, precip- 
itous cliffs are they, but rounded, gently 
swelling slopes. True, in some places they 
become steep, and here and there reveal an 
outcropping ledge, but there is not much 
of this. 




A Waterfall in " Ca'liny " 
It is a land of springs, of flowing Avaters. 



32 



The Land of the Sky 3 



o 



Stand with me on the pinnacle of Couch 
Mountain, just behind our home. We have 
climbed twelve hundred feet to reach it; 
and now there spreads out below us the 
great French Broad Valley, with its trib- 
utaries, bounded by great ranges of moun- 
tains famous in legend and story : the Blue 
Ridge, the Pisgah range, the Swannanoas, 
and the Big Craggies; far to the right, 
mighty Mt. Mitchell; and in the distant 
southwest, behind the Nantahalas, the sky 
line of the Great Smoky Mountains. And 
scarce a cliff to be seen, but instead, the 
graceful, rounded outlines of the hills of 
the Land of the Sky. Forest, pasture, and 
field succeed one another, with here and 
there a glimpse of blue water. The words 
of the sixty-fifth psalm come to mind: 

" The pastures are clothed with flocks; 

The valleys also are covered over with corn ; 
They shout for joy, they also sing." 

Do you remember the Delectable Moun- 
tains, where the pilgrims refreshed them- 



34. Hills o' Ca'liny 

selves after their sad plight in Doubting 
Castle, and where they saw afar the towers 
of the Celestial City? Do you remember 
the shepherds, who took them about from 
point to point, to show them the beauties of 
the place, and to point them on their way? 
Well, these are the Delectable Mountains. 
And the shepherds who were so kind, — 
they live here too. Let us go along the 
winding roads till we meet them. 

For the roads all wind here; there are 
no straight roads. In the days when the 
fathers began to make good roads, and 
learned that they must have easy grades, 
they began to curve their lines around the 
hills; and so fixed has the habit become 
now that even where there might be a 
straight road, through the flat woods, by 
preference it winds. Do not deceive your- 
selves by its apparent direction, and try 
a short cut to reach the other extreme of 
the curve ; as soon as it is out of your sight, 
it will hitch itself around the other way. 



The Land of the Sky 35 

purposely to leave you stranded a mile 
from the path. 

But though the roads are crooked, they 
lead to the dwellings of the shepherds. 
("Howdy, brother! Stay all night with 
us." And as the days wax chill, and you 
find it uncomfortable to sleep in the woods, 
the invitation is welcome indeed. Around a 
roaring fire in the great rock fireplace, we 
sit with a homespun, homely, home-loving 
group, and lead on, with the aid of the 
Book, to the story of our pilgrimage, our 
ardent hopes of the Celestial City, yea, of 
our Saviour so soon to come. Good talk, 
I warrant you, will you find. If the shep- 
herds are rustic, they are not uncultured, 
if mayhap, gentle pilgrim, you are wise to 
recognize their culture. Gracious and cour- 
teous, interested but respectful, they enter- 
tain you right royally. 

But come ; for supper is ready, and smok- 
ing hot it comes upon the table. '' What, 
you eat no bacon? Try this venison, or 



The Land of the Sky 37 

is fried chicken" — and I had thought 
them fried mush balls, till in my inno- 
cency I tasted one, and then I thought them 
fish! ''No/' says the mother, ''I don't 
believe in coffee myself; it's bad for the 
liver. But surely you drink something at 
meals? Really, you'll starve." And the 
table groans with more than our meager 
table knows : hominy and corn bread, sweet 
potatoes and Irish potatoes, peach pre- 
serves and hot apple sauce, and hot bis- 
cuits — ''Have a hot biscuit; those by 
you are getting cold." And so I take an- 
other hot biscuit, break it open and lay it 
on the side of my plate to cool, while I 
surreptitiously sequester a cool one from 
the near-by plate. 

I am living all this over (and how much 
more!), with my good friends up on Brushy 
Creek ; would I might mention their names 
in memory of grace. But everywhere we 
meet them ; and we go on our way the next 
morning with a glow in our hearts that 



38 Hills o' Ca'liny 

surely none but the shepherds of the De- 
lectable Mountains could inspire. 

How the little cascades tumble down 
from the mountains! This is a land of 
springs, of flowing waters. You need never 
thirst here. And so easy is it to find 
springs that the inhabitants have grown 
shiftless thereby. Dig a well up on a hill, 
when there is a spring in the gulch? No; 
build down by the spring. We note this 
everywhere, that the little houses are down 
in the hollows, where their inhabitants can 
reach the springs, and the big houses of 
the people who come in for health or rest 
or pleasure, are built up on the hills, where 
they can see the sky. 

Across the road there run tiny streams 
at every little interval. And on the thirsty 
days how refreshing! Only, as we stoop 
to catch the sparkling waters, there will 
cross the mind a sudden spasm of fear, the 
suspicion that somewhere up on the branch 
there may be a cabin and a pigsty, for of 



The Land of the Sky 39 

course the pigs must get to water ! Once in 
awhile, some kind soul has fashioned from 
a wayside spring a drinking trough, with a 
clear stream piped into it; and to this un- 
known benefactor I always feel like pour- 
ing out a libation as I repeat Scott's lines : 

'' Drink, weary pilgrim, drink, and pray 
For the kind soul of Sibyl Gray, 
Who built this cross and well." 

As I come out from under the apple trees 
morning by morning, on my way to the 
barn, the dawn lifts its pure face over the 
eastern mountains. Alw^ays I feel lifted 
above the things of earth by that sudden 
tableau. No burst of music from cathedral 
organ, no chant of choral voices, can work 
the wonders wrought in the soul by that 
morning vision. To come out from under 
the apple trees on the straight path, to lift 
the eyes to the sky, is like coming to the 
brow of a cliff and stretching new-found 
wings — the wings of morning — in flight 
over the world beneath. The strength-girt 



40 Hills o' Ca'liny 

hills, the sky in soft raiment, the mystery 
of the mists, the steadfast majesty of the 
forests, the tinkle of the rock-hampered 
waters in the brook, all are caught and 
blended in a great thanksgiving, a mighty 
benediction. Constantly with us here is the 
spirit of the hills that inspired Lucy Lar- 
com in her ''Prayer on the Mountain:" 

" Gird me with the strength of Thy steadfast hills. 

The speed of Thy streams give me. 
In the spirit that calms, with the life that thrills, 

I would stand or run for Thee. 
Let me be Thy voice, or Thy silent power, 

As the cataract, or the peak, — 
An eternal thought, in my earthly hour, 

Of the living God to speak. 

'' Clothe me in the rose tints of Thy skies, 

Upon morning summits laid; 
Robe me in the purple and gold that flies 

Through Thy shuttles of light and shade ; 
Let me rise and rejoice in Thy smile aright, 

As mountains and forests do ; 
Let me welcome Thy twilight and Thy night 

And wait for Thy dawn anew. 



The Land of the Sky 41 

Give me of the brook's faith, joyously sung 

Under clank of its icy chain ; 
Give me of the patience that hides among 

Thy hilltops, in mist and rain ; 
Lift me up from the clod, let me breathe Thy 
breath ; 

Thy beauty and strength give me; 
Let me lose both the name and the meaning 
of death 

In the life that I share with Thee." 




S (M 

TO ■* 



The State of Religion 

Quite recently I stayed overnight up on 
the French Broad River, with a young man 
who stands high in his community as 
farmer, citizen, and Christian. I found 
him not only a man wide awake in all 
business affairs, but one whose practical 
piety I could not doubt. I saw it in his 
benevolence toward orphans and other 
needy ones, one or more of whom he had 
in his family or was educating at distant 
schools; in his earnest endeavors to raise 
the standard of piety in his home church, 
which included a crusade against tobacco 
using; and in the fact that he leaves his 
very comfortable home and the superin- 
tendency of his highly cultivated farm for 
several weeks every winter to circulate the 
blessed Bible where most needed. 



44 Hills o' Ca'Iiny 

In the course of a conversation, he told 
me of an experience he had had the year 
before in the county convention of his 
church. Though a layman, he was placed 
as chairman on the committee '' On the 
State of Religion." 

'' I knew I couldn't write the report,'' he 
said to me, '' so I just knelt down and asked 
the Lord to write it through me." He 
showed me the report which he presented 
as (with amendments) it was printed in 
the published minutes. 

Beginning with .the statement, ^' The peo- 
ple of this county have forsaken God in 
their lives," it went on to particularize the 
apathy of church members in spiritual ex- 
ercises, their use of liquor and tobacco, 
filthy and frivolous conversation, and the 
niggardliness that made the per capita of- 
fering only one dollar a year. 

The report was not adopted without se- 
vere criticism and amendment. But the 
marvelous thing to me is, not that such a 



The State of Religion 45 

report could be truthfully written; for oi 
what community could not this and much 
more be said? but according to my obser- 
vation, the marvel is that there should be 
a man with the spiritual insight and the 
divine courage to uncover the plague spot 
and call for a cure. And that there are 
such men in this mountain country is evi- 
dence that " the state of religion " is not 
so backward as in sections supposed to be 
farther advanced. A generation or two 
ago, almost anywhere in the United States 
there could be found such Jeremiahs, but 
the last few decades have advanced the 
church into Babylonian captivity; and now 
we find, north, east, and west, on the one 
hand a general indifference to or contempt 
of religion, on the other hand a formal ad- 
herence to mere church forms and a satis- 
faction in institutional methods. 

But here in the mountains I observe 
many evidences of the existence of the old- 
time religion — a fact mirrored, indeed, in 



46 Hills o' Ca^liny 

all its virtues and all its faults, in the re- 
frain of the popular song often sung in 
the country churches: 

'* 'Tis the old-time religion, 
Tis the old-time religion, 
Tis the old-time religion. 

And it's good enough for me. 
It's good enough for me, 
It's good enough for me; 
'Twas good enough for Joseph (or 
Moses or Daniel or father, etc.), 
And it's good enough for me." 

When I first arrived in the mountain 
country and its metropolis, I was im- 
pressed with the evident influence of re- 
ligion that lay upon the minds of all 
classes. Going along the streets and hear- 
ing the sound of a piano from some stately 
mansion, I found the music more often a 
hymn tune than a waltz. Was a tuneful 
voice raised in song, it was most likely, 
'' What a Friend we have in Jesus," or 
'^ Rock of Ages." And however sincere or 



The State of Religion 47 

insincere the singer, he furnished evidence 
that the power of religion was yet upper- 
most in the society of the mountains. Even 
when in convivial state, the average man's 
stream of thought was dammed within the 
levee of the hymn. One night I met a 
wagonload of men whose reckless driving 
and personal abandon proclaimed their re- 
cent visit to a moonshine still. They were 
roaring out a song, and what do you think 
it was? — ^^ We Won't Go Home Till 
Morning,'' or ^^ There'll Be a Hot Time"? 
No; ludicrously inappropriate to that rol- 
licking, drunken crowd, it was — 

*' On Jordan's stormy banks I stand, 
And cast a wishful eye 
To Canaan's fair and happy land, 
Where my possessions lie ! " 

Standing on the public square at Ashe- 
ville, you cannot fail, almost any day, of 
being entertained (if you find entertain- 
ment therein) by little knots of men of the 
farmer and laboring classes, vigorously 




7^ o 
C "^ 



o Z 



The State of Religion 49 

discussing with voice and finger and 
clenched hand, the doctrines of predestina- 
tion, baptism, falling from grace, and sanc- 
tification. Here in this city, indeed, meet 
the farthest extremes of the ecclesiastical 
domain. And here is the most concen- 
trated cosmopolitanism on the earth, if 
classes rather than nationalities be re- 
garded. The nabobs of society from New 
York to Charleston and New Orleans, 
touch elbows on the sidewalks with lank- 
haired, check-shirted mountaineers ; and 
automobiles find in the deliberate oxcart a 
more effective regulator of speed than the 
policeman's billy. Likewise, the churches 
run a wide gamut, from stone cathedrals, 
where the highest culture is ministered to 
by men trained in the latest American the- 
ology if not in German radicalism, down to 
little chapels of battened boards, where 
hell-fire is still vigorously preached. 

What I have related, however, may be 
regarded as only the foam on this broad, 



50 Hills 0^ Ca^liny 

moving sea of religion. It is certainly true 
that the sober thought of most of the peo- 
ple, especially in the country, has to do with 
religion. Radicalism on the one hand and 
infidelity on the other, are beginning their 
inroads; but, back to back, the church yeo- 
manry are making a sturdy fight against 
them. And the ministry in gsneral, is 
seeking with more or less intelligence to 
direct this battle. I know of city minis- 
ters who spend their entire Sundays, and 
some of their week days, apart from the 
necessary duties of their own charges, in 
visiting unshepherded, neglected commu- 
nities in the country, seeking to inculcate 
piety and Bible knowledge by means of 
Sunday schools and pastoral visits. And I 
have found, as I have traveled through 
parts of the country and have talked with 
the people, not a few young men able and 
willing to discuss matters of religion. So 
many of these young men, indeed, are tak- 
ing courses in theology in various schools 



The State of Religion 51 

that it has seemed to me the moun- 
tains must be furnishing the best recruit- 
ing ground for such schools. Such young 
men are in the minority, it is true, but 
there is a goodly number of them. 

The country ministry and partially the 
city ministry seem to realize more or less 
keenly that it is a losing fight they are 
making. Vvith a dull longing, it has 
seemed to me, for better weapons, they 
take up again and again the old instru- 
ments with which the fathers met backslid- 
ing and indifference, and grasping the 
swords of revivals and protracted meet- 
ings, struggle desperately to kill the giants 
and bring their heads into the camp. Still 
is the red vengeance of a sin-hating God 
shaken over heads that tremble less and 
less as the years go by; still are the loving 
mercies of a sin-pardoning Saviour held 
out to hands too listless to open ; and it has 
gone to my heart to witness the bravely 
hidden chagrin (perhaps I should say sor- 



52 Hills 0^ Ca'liny 

row) of the minister closing a ^^ protracted 
meeting " without one soul ^^ saved." 

Yet the mass of the people are religious. 
But the revival is beginning to pall upon 
their taste. The reaction following this 
time of excitement is discouraging, and I 
can almost justly compare their reluctance 
to imbibe this spiritual liquor with their 
good sense in voting the State '' dry." 
Many are hungering for more satisfying, 
vital truth. It is time wise efforts were 
being made to satisfy this hunger ; not with 
more dogmas, but with the vital central 
truth of the free atonement of Jesus; not 
with suspicion and fighting of ministers 
and people who may resent the preaching 
of strange doctrines, but with the gentle 
ministrations of Jesus to body and soul. 
And I believe, from experience, that an 
earnest Christian purpose, transforming 
our faces and our actions, will be welcomed 
by a sorely pressed people who still love 
" the old-time religion " of Jesus Christ. 



The State of Religion 58 

That this religious conservatism, dog- 
gedly resisting in front and rear the at- 
tacks of the devil, may be ascribed in some 
degree to the isolation of the mountains, I 
will not deny; but I have fondly given 
credit also to other vital factors, namely, 
the inherent life of the two great forces, 
the conservative Baptist and the aggres- 
sive Methodist. While in early days active 
antagonists, their separate influences nev- 
ertheless combined to form characters at 
once cautious of innovation and eager to 
find truth. Until recent years, indeed, 
Baptists and Methodists practically shared 
this country between them; and today the 
common inquiry is, ^^ Are you a Baptist, 
or a Methodist? " Being neither, you must 
be nothing. Mine host of the French Broad 
told me a story well illustrating this fact. 

Not so very many years ago, he said, a 
Presbyterian ' minister came up into the 

1 The story is a favorite one in the mountains, more 
often, however, told with an Episcopalian than a Presby- 
terian setting. 



54 Hills o' Ca^liny 

mountains to search out what chance mem- 
bers of his flock he might find. He said 
little about his order until he was well up 
in the mountains. Then one day, coming 
to a cabin where was a gentle old lady, he 
stopped to converse with her ; and he finally 
asked,! '^ Sister, do you know if there are 
any Presbyterians hereabouts? '^ 

She slowly shook her head. '' Hain't 
never heerd on 'em," she said, ^' but I tell 
ye, my old man hunts for a livin', an' he's 
tacked up on the back wall of the shanty 
the skins of all the varmints he's ever 
killed. Ye might go out and look." 

In any case, these two great denomina- 
tions have long occupied and prepared this 
field, and still occupy it, at least passively. 
Presbyterianism is making great headway, 
through schools large and small, and Ro- 
man Catholicism has a foothold in the 
cities, while the Episcopal Church has a 
vogue among the upper classes. But new 
and false cults are making attacks upon 



The State of Religion 55 

the old-time ramparts: Millennial Dawn is 
scattering its free literature everywhere, 
and various forms and shades of ^* holi- 
ness " teaching are making raids upon the 
churches. Many winds of doctrine are 
blowing, many minds are being befooled, 
yet hearts fainting for fear are crying for 
comfort and help. 

It is not the pulpit orator nor the emo- 
tional evangelist who is needed to help the 
people of the mountains. Their need is the 
need of the world: it is the need of men 
who live the truth. Too much have the 
people been dosed with emotionalism, too 
many ministers are there to hysterical de- 
votion. It is not difficult to find at some 
of the '' protracted meetings,'' scenes that 
rival the religious passion of Negro orgies 
farther south, when, in the grip of '^ the 
Spirit/' women scream and weep, when the 
preacher excites himself into the fearsome 
'' holy laugh," and when bodies, writhing 
and contorted, are cast before " the mercy- 



56* Hills o' Ca'liny 

seat." Offspring of the rough unculture of 
pioneer days and the license of a young 
religion in its first spasms of protest 
against formalism, this abandoned dissipa- 
tion of nervous power, which generations 
ago may have been a natural outburst, is 
now diligently sought as the evidence of ac- 
ceptance with God. It is not the exciting 
of this spirit in any form that the people 
need. Popular revival methods do not 
reach the soul. 

The resemblance of this spiritual intoxi- 
cation to barroom inebriety always reminds 
me of the story Mark Andrews tells of one 
of our neighbors, good old Madison Lumly. 
Madison, along about Civil War time, was 
something of a preacher. He was drafted 
into the Southern army, where he served 
unwillingly because of hunger if of nothing 
else. One day, with four of his messmates, 
he was out near the lines, glumly viewing 
prospects in the shape of a small stick of 
corn pone. 



The State of Religion 57 

*^ No use talkin', fellers/^ said Wes 
Adams, ^' we got to git some grub, or we'll 
shore starve/^ 

Just then a pig stumbled along under 
the trees near them. Four rifles were in- 
stantly raised. 

''Don't shoot, boys, don't shoot!" cried 
Preacher Madison, '' that ain't your pig. 
You'll be stealin'. I won't eat no stolen 
meat." 

'' Stealin' or no stealin'," said Wes, '' I'm 
goin' to shoot that pig." And his rifle 
cracked. The pig was speedily skinned, 
and slices of bacon were soon sizzling in 
the pan. 

Madison drew his belt up tighter and 
hitched himself halfway around; then, as 
the others commenced to eat, he took out 
his little corn pone and began munching. 
But pretty soon the sight and smell began 
to press the picket line of his virtue very 
hard, and with a solemn countenance he 
said, '' Boys, I shore won't eat none of that 




Primitive but' Comfortable 
A log home in the hills o' Ca'liny. 



58 



The State of Religion 59 

stolen meat, but you kin give me some of 
the gravy ! 'M 

The reprobate's way of becoming happy 
is by loss of self-control through alcohol; 
the penitent seeks the same self-abandon- 
ment through another agent. The dance 
hall attracts the unregenerate by its excite- 
ment and its social intercourse; for it the 
man-controlled revival makes a passable 
substitute. They all come out of the same 
pan. And the dry bread of creed-religion 
makes it pretty hard to resist calling for 
some of the gravy. Poor people! not only 
of the mountains, but of the wide country. 
Blind leaders ! self-deluded or worse. Who 
is there to teach that religion lies not in 
frenzy, but in service? Who will come 
back to the simplicity and the depth of the 
Saviour's methods? Emphatically, it is not 
the emotional preacher that the mountains 
need. 

No, it is not emotion, nor is it creed, 
that can better the state of religion. But 



60 Hills 0^ Ca'liny 

it is the revivifying touch of the spiritually 
charged that will bring the life of Christ 
into the coves and the valleys, upon the 
hills and the mountains, into the cities and 
the country. As the Man of Galilee went 
about from Capernaum to Jerusalem, re- 
storing health to the fevered, relieving 
the hungry, sympathizing with the grief- 
stricken, and healing the broken of heart, 
so today are His servants, if they would 
prove their apostleship, to minister to the 
sick, to clothe the naked, and to speak from 
their heart experiences the love that draws 
to abounding, eternal life. Into the valiant 
but fainting soul of religion is to be poured 
the life of Christian service. This is the 
ministry demanded by the state of religion 
in the mountains. 

I shall not easily forget a scene im- 
pressed on my mind one Sunday afternoon, 
a scene that stands out from others of its 
kind only because of the greater pathos of 
a more forlorn home. We had gone, at the 



The State of Religion 61 

suggestion of a good Methodist neighbor, 
to visit an old woman, bedridden for six 
months and in the last stages of tuber- 
culosis. 

A married daughter, with several un- 
kempt children, had come home to care 
for her mother. The two-room house was 
filthy almost beyond description. The cold 
and broken remains of several successive 
meals were heaped upon the table, feast 
for the swarms of flies. 

The young woman put back the strings 
of uncombed hair from before her snuff- 
stained face, and greeted us with some 
shamefacedness. She didn't reckon her 
mother would want to see any one; talkin' 
disturbed her, and she reckoned singin' 
would. But we went into the other room, 
where the old woman lay in a stupor, upon 
a cord bed that had not been disturbed 
since she first lay down upon it. 

For some time we talked in low tones 
with the daughter, while the old lady 



62 Hills o' Ca'liny 

seemed to take no notice. But when at last 
we suggested going, she proved she had 
heard by whispering to know if we would 
not sing. 

" Do you want us to sing? '' 

" Yes, ef 'twon't hurt ye." 

So we sang, softly, the old, familiar 
hymns. We did not think of the new 
songs, the transient favorites. Somehow, 
in that hour, our minds and our souls 
wanted to grip something of eternal reali- 
ties, and we sang, ^^ Jesus, lover of my 
soul,'' '' There is a fountain filled with 
blood," '' There's a land that is fairer than 
day," and ^^ Tell me the old, old story." 

As we came to the chorus of that last 
hymn, the old woman's wasted hand was 
lifted on the quilt, and she began feebly 
to pat in time with the music. A little 
stronger and stronger she seemed to grow, 
until she set both hands softly to clapping, 
and as we reached the last verse, she broke 
out, as she had been wont to do in her 



The State of Religion 63 

happy Methodist meetings: '^ I know that 
old, old story/' she cried, '' yes, I know 
that story! Tell it again, tell it again! I 
know that old, old story of Jesus and His 
love.'' 

Her husband, a fine, white-haired old 
man, had come in with an armful of wood, 
which he had thrown by the fireplace, and 
now he sat there upon it, his face working 
with emotion. I went up to the sick 
woman, and softly spoke to her of Jesus. 
Would she have us pray with her? yes, 
she would! And we knelt there, while my 
wife and I sent up petitions for the soul 
of this woman and the blessing of her 
house. The presence of God was in that 
room. The two or three children who had 
crowded in, stood with awe-widened eyes, 
and their stolid, snuff-drenched mother was 
wiping her eyes. The old man, with tears 
streaming down his face, said as he bade 
us good-by, " Come again, friends. Come 
right frequent." 



64 Hills o' Ca^liny 

The next day the two young women stu- 
dents who had accompanied us there, went 
back to help. They had two of the boys 
carry over a large arm rocker; they got the 
old woman up and comfortably placed in 
the chair, while they took off the straw 
tick and had the boys refill it. They helped 
the daughter clean the house, as much as 
prudence and sensibility permitted; they 
cleansed and dressed the old woman's bed- 
sores, and finally put her back to bed, more 
comfortable and happy than she had been 
for a year. She poured blessings upon 
their heads and called them angels, and 
roused herself to sniff eagerly at the flow- 
ers they brought. Several times before her 
death were visits made to cheer and help 
her, and the influence was not lost in that 
home nor in that community. 

I know not if the religion of mere creed 
and cold argument brings satisfaction to 
the souls of any who seek by mere outward 
observances to gain heaven ; but I do know 



The State of Religion 65 

that the religion — be it of doctrine or of 
unphrased spirit — that translates itself 
into glad helping of others, is a religion 
that brings the love of Jesus into the soul. 
'' Pure religion and undefiled before God 
and the Father is this, To visit the father- 
less and widows in their affliction, and to 
keep himself unspotted from the world/' 
And if into the soul of such a lover of 
Jesus is poured the grand, the awful, the 
joyous truth of the soon coming of Christ, 
he is urged by the impending dissolution 
of the world and the settlement of the des- 
tinies of all men, and inspired by the glad 
prospect of meeting his Saviour and his 
Master in glory, to give his utmost to this 
the only cause he can know. The herald 
of the coming King must be the personal 
representative of his Sovereign in the 
homes and the communities he visits. For 
such heralds are the mountains waiting. 




(c) Herbert W. Pelton 



Mt. Pisgah 



" A beautiful, dome-shaped mass, Mt. Pisgah is approached on 

the east along the ridge of Little Pisgah, which because 

of its rodent-like appearance from Asheville, has 

received the nickname, ' The Eat.' " 

66 



The Path to Pisgah 

Mt. Pisgah dominates the French Broad 
Valley. Though not the loftiest of the 
score of mile-high peaks that keep Mt. 
Mitchell company, it occupies the most 
commanding position in the view from 
Asheville to Brevard, and, next to Mitchell, 
is the most talked of and the most fre- 
quently visited of all the Carolina moun- 
tains. 

A beautiful dome-shaped mass, steep, al- 
most sheer, on three sides, it is approached 
on the east along the ridge of Little Pisgah, 
a ridge which, because of its rodent-like 
appearance from Asheville, has received 
the nickname of '' The Rat.^' Southward 
from the big mountain runs Pisgah Ridge, 
a series of peaks and connecting elevations 
that, nearly circling Lake Toxaway, finally 



68 Hills o' Ca'liny 

lose themselves in the ramparts of the 
Blue Ridge. 

Famed in song and story is the region 
which Pisgah conspires with the Blue 
Ridge and the Great Smokies to shut in. 
Its hill-broken expanse lies before him who 
stands upon Pisgah's height. And not ill- 
named is Pisgah; for, while the mountains 
to the west shut off the view from a pos- 
sible Great Sea, far to the north lies Mt. 
Mitchell, the Hermon of the Appalachians, 
while between stretches the fruitful pla- 
teau of the French Broad like another 
Jordan Valley. And so it was with some 
tinglings of anticipated pleasure that I 
found my feet on the path of Pisgah. 

Crossing the river over Long Shoals 
Bridge, I found myself the first night shel- 
tered in the hospitable home of an Esau 
whom I had met that morning hunting in 
the fields. Those late days of November 
bore suggestions of winter's reign, and 
the night was cool enough to make us wel- 



The Path to Pisgah 69 

come the leaping flames in the stone fire- 
place. Several men there were staying 
with Brother Esau, one a school-teacher, 
another a miller, and still another a farm 
hand; and the conversation that night was 
varied and sprightly. I had the book be- 
fore them all, and one point in the canvass 
awakened the curiosity of Brother Esau. 

" Now what do you think of this ever- 
lasting torment? '* he asked. ^' I ain't 
much Bible-read myself, but some says one 
thing, and some says another, and I should 
like to know for sure.'' 

I let the school-teacher talk on the sub- 
ject for a while; and then taking out my 
pocket Bible, I read some texts, a very few, 
with an explanation of Revelation 20: 10, 
that quite satisfied Brother Esau and the 
miller, but left the school-teacher a little 
hostile. However, none of them wanted 
the book. 

" Fact is," said Brother Esau, '' I got 
burnt on one book. The fellow said it was 



70 Hills o' Ca'liny 

a Bible, but when I got it, I found it was 
a Mormon Bible. Er — no (turning to his 
wife) — what was it? An Advent Bible, 
I believe. Yes, that's it, an Advent Bible.'' 

'' What is an Advent Bible? " I asked, 
with true innocence. ^^ I never heard of 
an Advent Bible." 

'^ Well, it's over there in the corner. I'll 
show it to you. Old Pap Somers come by 
after I'd bought it, and he says, says he, 
' Huh ! hit may be you kin stand this here, 
but you don't wan' to let your children see 
it.' And so I kivered it under all them 
books and papers, an' I ain't never looked 
at it sence." 

It was dug out from its hiding place, 
and presented for my inspection. And 
with great curiosity I looked upon the Ad- 
vent Bible. A part of the title was there, 
sure enough, — Bible, — ^* Bible Readings " ! 

" Why, I know that book," I said, '' I 
have it myself. It isn't a new kind of 
Bible; but it's made up of questions and 



The Path to Pisgah 71 

answers taken from God's Book, the true 
Bible. Have you ever read in it? '' 

''Not much/' he said; "not after old 
Pap Somers warned me. But I reckon 
hit's all right, sence you say so." And I 
really had some hope that he might there- 
after touch the Advent Bible less gingerly. 

The morning was bright, clear, and cold, 
with a wind out of the northwest. Pisgah 
was wreathed with a circlet of snow, which 
in the distance, through the frost-laden air, 
looked like a white cloud. I stepped along 
briskly, drawing in with delight the pure, 
crisp air. Around a turn of the road I 
passed out of the woods into a clearing a 
mile or two long, cluttered with log cabins. 
It was a Negro settlement. As I neared 
the first house, a small cabin with a lean-to 
and one window beside the chimney, my 
ears were greeted with a fierce hubbub, half 
a dozen voices combining in a dread ca- 
cophony, above which a child's voice and a 



72 Hills o' Ca'liny 

woman's voice rose shrilly. ^^ Til skin yo' 
alive!" I heard just as I came to the 
open door. 

" Good morning/' I interrupted inci- 
sively. 

The racket miraculously died. '^ Mo'nin', 
suh. Yassuh; we's all well, 'ceptin' fo' de 
fightin'. Mighty ornery passel o' chillun, 
suh! Books! Huh! No, suh; I ain' got 
no money fo' no books. Fs a po' widow 
woman, an' I has to mek a libbin' fo' dese 
chilluns at de washtub. Co'se my husban' 
he wu'ks in de limekiln — uh — uh — my 
oldes' son, I mean." 

I did not smile. Perhaps it was her old- 
est son; Maria had an enviable reputation 
for veracity among her white neighbors. 
And Maria took a book — two books. 

I took Thanksgiving dinner with the 
squire. A hearty man is the squire, ex- 
sheriff and present assemblyman, with a 
quiet, straight-looking gray eye, grizzled 



The Path to Pisgah 73 

hair, and a handclasp that has no sham 
in it. His wife, a busy, bustling woman, 
presides at a bountiful board, whose length 
can afford no explanation but of frequent 
and generous company. 

It was Thanksgiving dinner, spread late 
for the sons who came from the city, bring- 
ing with them their wives and children, 
stately dames and rollicking boys. Yet in 
this family reunion the stranger was made 
welcome, despite the added fact that he ate 
no turkey nor bacon nor venison, and was 
therefore jocularly called a Jew. And 
around the evening fire, backed in a corner 
with the little ones, the stranger found him- 
self not merely welcomed but hailed a hero, 
because he was a story-teller. 

The squire's is a great old rambling 
house, built piece by piece, yet modernized 
with piazzas and plenty of paint — a house 
set in a fine old oak grove, and backed by 
spacious barns; for the squire owns broad 
acres of river bottom, and his horses and 



74 Hills 0^ Ca'liny 

dairy cattle and hogs have taken prizes at 
the county fair — not that the squire bends 
his back so much in the fields now; his day 
for that is past : he is a public-service man, 
and he has a son-in-law to superintend the 
blacks. 

Almost it seemed we were back in ante 
helium days; for there were Negro house 
servants and Negro field hands, Negro 
boys and girls and mammies, Negro min- 
strels and Negro jollity. There was a 
young Negro butler, and a fat, jolly old 
Auntie Dede for cook. A Negro boy 
tended the fires, a Negro girl was ready 
at beck and call for errands ; and during the 
evening could be heard, back in the kitchen 
and long dining-hall, the scraping of the 
fiddle and the shuffling of feet, with bursts 
of laughter and railery, where the serv- 
ants, all of one hue, were making merry. 
• • • • • 

My path to Pisgah was not direct. It is 
a wide country lying at the foot of the 



The Path to Pisgah 75 

mountain; on one side I visited three or 
four hundred homes. It was up toward the 
head of the North Fork, the second week, 
that I found Loney. Up a creek, off the 
road, a faint wagon trail ran, and I fol- 
lowed it and my nose — especially my nose 
— until I came to the cause. Passing the 
pigsty, I came to the log house. A woman, 
with uncombed, coarse black hair, and a 
subdued expression in her fading eyes, 
opened the door. Within were several 
children, one of whom was a plump-faced 
girl of sixteen, almost the mirror of her 
mother, but without the subdued expres- 
sion. She was Loney. 

I talked with them about the book, and 
with each telling point came their prompt 
assent, especially when my eye lifted to ap- 
peal to theirs : " Yes, suh ! Indeed ! Shu' 
'nuff! Law, yes! Yes, suh!'' It meant 
no profound agreement; it was simply the 
requirement of etiquette. 

** Let's take the book, maw." 



76 Hills o' Ca'liny 

^' What d'you think yore paw would say, 
Loney? '' 

'' What kin he say? Co'se he'll r'ar, 
but that don't do nothin.' " 

'' No, I don't reckon we'd better. Pow- 
erful hard to git any money now." 

" Yes, but, maw, let's take it. I liked 
that last part the most." 

So I turned again with them to the prep- 
aration for Jesus' coming, and read and 
talked. The New Jerusalem and the new 
earth! How incomprehensible a change 
from the surroundings in which we read 
of them! Could the book ever lift them 
toward it? 

'' I'd give a dollar just to read that," 
exclaimed Loney. ^' Let's take it, maw. 
Paw can't say nothin'. Co'se he'll chase 
us, but we-all kin run faster'n he kin." 

So they took it. And up above the joists, 
on some loose boards, they discovered a 
purse, paw's purse, out of which to pay for 
a primer also. I wondered, as I left, if 



The Path to Pisgah 77 

Loney would take the book when it came, 
and what the book might do for her. But 
sure enough, I found her when the time 
came to deliver, away up on a front seat in 
a closely packed crowd at a Christmas tree 
in the country chapel, her handkerchief 
tightly twisted and wadded in her worka- 
day hands, quivering with excitement over 
the great event, but ready for the book. 
Leaving me screened at the door by a bois- 
terous crew of gallants and red-cheeked 
girls, she went in search of, and found, a 
very manageable '' paw,'' who had a dollar. 
So Loney took the book. 

I think often of her, eager, lawless, un- 
trained. What forces will there be that 
shall bring the light of truth and love into 
the darkened coves of the Forks, north, 
south, east, and west? Maybe the book is 
glimmering yet in Loney's home, keeping 
alive the longing for the sunlight of edu- 
cation and salvation. Oh, when shall it 
come? 



78 Hills o' Ca^iny 

At last I was at the head of the valley, 
had come to the last human habitation, was 
entering the wild, wide-stretching domain 
of Vanderbilt. Up under the shoulder of 
Pisgah he had a hunting lodge, a massive 
log structure, where once in a year or two 
he came with a party to shoot, or shoot at, 
the deer and bear with which his hundred- 
thousand-acre preserve was stocked, or at 
the wolves and catamounts that warily 
invaded the wide waste. A world as pri- 
meval, almost, as in the beginning. 

A few rangers he had, who peopled the 
woods more scantily than the Cherokees 
of old, too few, indeed, wholly to prevent 
the depredations of poachers. Everywhere 
up under the brows of Pisgah, I was offered 
venison at breakfast, dinner, and supper, 
the fortunate possessors of which averred 
that the deer were always coming down 
out of Vanderbilt's lands — such a nui- 
sance ! When they got to eating their corn, 
of course they had to shoot* them! 



The Path to Pisgah 79 

For two or three miles I had been 
warned not to attempt to reach the lodge 
that night. Yes, there were keepers there, 
but it was too far. 

" How far? '^ 

" Wal, right smart.'' 

'' Five or six miles? " 

^^ Reckon so.'' 

" Any one could make that before dark." 

^^Wal, don't reckon." 

A mile or two farther on, however, the 
distance had lengthened in the report of 
another to eight or nine miles. Finally at 
half past three o'clock, I came to the last 
house. The old man was a little grumpy, 
and I think he didn't wish to keep me 
overnight, suspecting something not quite 
orthodox about my book. 

Yes, he said, I could make it before dark, 
he thought. It was seven miles. Go up 
the road to Yellow Gap, take the trail there 
to the right, and follow it to the lodge. 
Plain way! 



80 Hills o' Ca'liny 

I went up to Yellow Gap; I took the trail 
to the right; I entered upon the plain way. 
The trail was fairly plain. It had been 
well made, and the incline was seldom 
steep. The falling leaves had carpeted it 
thickly, but the depression where it had 
been dug or trodden against the hills was 
sufficient to mark it more plainly than 
many another trail I have followed. 

On and on it went ; in and out it wound. 
Around the shoulder of a hill, going a little 
up; along the inner margin of a gloomy 
amphitheater, ascending a little higher; 
around another shoulder, skirting another 
amphitheater, coming out upon a dipping 
ridge or gap between two knobs; then 
again the hills, the amphitheaters, two or 
three times repeated, and again the gap; 
until certain expectation began to make of 
it a curious double-faced monotony. And 
ever the sun sank lower, the shadows grew 
more pronounced, the gloom of the gulches 
deeper. 



The Path to Pisgah 81 

I fell to noting the leaves that carpeted 
the trail, bright or dull or withered, mostly 
oak and maple. If there were any others, 
they were lost in the multitudes of these 
dominant races of the forest. If I paused 
a moment to listen, almost surely the only 
sound was the soft, still dropping of the 
leaves, sounding like the muffled pattering 
of rain. So still! And the words of a 
book came back to me : '' When every 
earthly sound is hushed, the silence of the 
soul makes more distinct the voice of God." 
The mighty hills, the towering trees, the 
flickering sunbeams through the foliage, 
the glimpses of far blue sky, the infinite 
hush, — all these speak eloquently, though 
with blurred accent from their crushed 
tracings, to my sin-dulled heart. And even 
the falling leaves, have they not a message? 
falling, faded, withered leaves, you were 
once the words of God! now, alas! almost 
silenced in the deadening fogs of sin. 
Hasten the day when again whatever the 



82 Hills 0^ Ca'liny 

hand or the breath of God has touched may 
be read as an open book of familiar char- 
acters ! 

Tramp, tramp, tramp, a weary way ! The 
seven miles were gone; they stretched into 
ten. And the trail wound on and on, 
around and around, still rising, still lead- 
ing, but never ending. The sun sank lower 
and lower. The trail beneath the trees was 
dark, though the sunset lingered, a red 
splendor, for an hour. Then it paled to 
saffron, to purple; and in place of the day 
ruler, blazed out at last the evening star. 
Wearily I kept along the trail, now in com- 
plete darkness except for the starlight. I 
felt with my feet the slight depression that 
marked the path, and for two hours in the 
darkness plodded on through the forest. 
My eyes were staring wide for light, and 
sometimes I fancied they caught a gleam; 
my ears were straining for other sounds 
than those that came, the hoot of owls and 
the far-off howl of a wolf, and several 



The Path to Pisgah 83 

times I stopped in vain to verify my im- 
pression of a human voice. Once I passed 
the mouth of a cave, and almost decided 
to creep in and wait for day; but the 
thought that the lodge must be near by 
now decided me, and on I went. 

At last, joy! from out of the waste of 
nature I came upon the works of man, a 
fence and a gate. Where there is a gate, 
there must be a habitation, and I went joy- 
fully through and cast about for the house. 
But the most that I could find was a sign- 
board a few steps beyond. I went up to 
it, and in the light of brilliant Venus I 
strained my eyes to read it. I read it. 
Mockingly it said, ''Good-Enough Trail." 

Far be it from me to quarrel with the 
genial signboard. The trail, indeed, like 
the old-time religion, might be good enough 
for me, if only I could keep it. But what 
I longed for was not so much a better trail 
as to know where any trail had an end. 
It seemed, indeed, to have ended there. It 



84 Hills 0^ Ca^liny 

was in one of the familiar gaps between 
two knobs; and seek as I would, casting 
about here and there over the ground be- 
yond the signboard, my feet could not find 
any well-defined trail. Small wonder! the 
next day I discovered that at this point, 
within the fence, the cattle had so trodden 
over the little glade through which the trail 
ran that there was no trail. 

After half an hour of fruitless search in 
the dark, I gave it up, and crept into a 
laurel clump to try to sleep. But on the 
night of the first of December, five thou- 
sand feet high, and protected only by a thin 
raincoat, I could sleep little. I warmed 
the ground where I lay, and shivered alter- 
nately on either side as I turned. At 
length, when the moon came up, two hours 
later, I rose with it, and again essayed to 
find the trail. Even then I could not; but 
going up the hill in the supposedly right 
direction, I found, a quarter of a mile be- 
yond, a trail defining itself enough to war- 



The Path to Pisgah 85 

rant trial, and along it I ventured, again 
winding and winding, but on rougher, rock- 
strewn ground. 

At last came my reward. Stark and for- 
bidding in the pale moonlight, the log walls 
of the lodge rose high on a great ledge across 
the valley. It was just midnight when I 
came to the coveted destination. Entering 
through the gates, I went up the drive, 
which led through an archway between two 
parts of the building. I did not know 
where the keepers might be living, but I 
thought I might discover if I made enough 
noise. Just as I was passing under the 
archway, the expected happened. My foot- 
steps waked up one of the inmates; there 
came out a dog named Nero. 

Now it is bad enough to face Nero in 
the pages of history, when Nero is dead, 
and plainly in the wrong; but it is worse 
to face Nero in the flesh, when one is a 
trespasser, and Nero is clearly in the right. 
I spoke to the dog, and I spoke for his 



86 Hills o' Ca'liny 

keeper, but the one would not heed nor the 
other hear; and at last before the advanc- 
ing Nero I retired, and resigned myself to 
the remainder of a sleepless night. 

At first I ensconced myself beside a log, 
covering up with leaves like the babes in 
the woods. But the wind searched me out, 
and I soon arose, and striking another 
trail, went out upon a long ridge. After 
a while, discovering a rock, I sprang down 
behind it to be sheltered from the wind. 
So far I had been careful not to light a 
fire; for the forest floor was like tinder, 
and numerous posters along the trail had 
warned, among other things, against ^^ set- 
ting out fires '' under penalty of law. But 
now the cold beginning to be numbing, I 
cautiously built a little fire against the 
rock, a fire which gave me much vigil and 
a little comfort, until the day dawned. 

I hailed the first gray streaks in the 
east, and stretched my stiffened limbs in a 
brisk walk upon the heights. The sunrise. 



The Path to Pisgah 87 

though not so grand as I had expected, was 
not without its beauty. A long streak of 
a cloud thrust its lancelike point down- 
ward toward the sun, which answered in 
its own characteristic way, setting the 
point on fire and burning its way slowly 
along the cloud's white length, swiftly run- 
ning from red to smoky yellow, to white 
ash. Then, low down, burned up suddenly 
a fiery red arch, like the mouth of a great 
furnace,, growing ever greater. Out of 
this there grew up a smaller yellow circle, 
and out of that, still lower, a blazing white 
one, three disks in one, each of which in 
turn I took for the orb. At last the sun 
was up, gazing down upon the white 
sea of mists below. And December had 
dawned. I turned again toward the lodge, 
to seek a breakfast. 

It was a royal breakfast that greeted me, 
too bountiful, indeed, for my needs. The 
ranger, Davis, had already gone out to look 
after his traps (two of which, hidden in 



88 Hills o' Ca'liny 

the trail, I unwittingly sprang with my 
heel later in the day), but his wife wel- 
comed me. Seldom for six months in the 
year did she see another face than her hus- 
band's and her child's, so not only the vis- 
itor but the book was welcome there. A 
lonely life, and not without its dangers! 
Poor woman ! I saw her again just a few 
days ago, in the county courtroom, clad in 
deep mourning. She was there to attend 
the trial of the murderer of her husband, 
shot from ambush for interfering with a 
poacher — his life for the life of the deer. 

About ten o'clock that morning I stood 
upon the top of Mt. Pisgah. The day was 
warm, so that I had labored with discarded 
coat upon the last stage of the trail. Upon 
the rounded bald top of three or four acres 
I stood, and surveyed in every direction a 
sea of mountains, with valleys and plains 
farther away. Far off, in three different 
directions, could be seen the cities of the 



The Path to Pisgah 89 

plain. It was an inspiring sight, one that 
drew the thoughts to the vastness of the 
land and the busy activity of the men 
therein. Yet here, far up in the clear, 
crisp atmosphere, away from all human 
sounds, and out of sight of every moving 
thing save the soaring vultures, there was 
an isolation, a celibacy of thought and feel- 
ing, that brought to mind that last scene 
^^ on Nebo's lonely mountain.'' I opened 
my Bible and read again the last three 
chapters of Deuteronomy; and with the 
echo in my heart of that matchless bene- 
diction, ** The eternal God is thy refuge, 
and underneath are the everlasting arms," 
I prayed for the speedy evangelization of 
all the land that lay before me. 

The path to Pisgah had been traced. 



The House of Rest 

Beth-shan, " The House of Rest," what 
a peculiarly soothing sense the old Hebrew 
name gives! Though why the town re- 
ceived its name, or how it could be appro- 
priate to the gruesome sequel of Gilboa, I 
do not know. But one place there is which 
I have named '' The House of Rest/^ of 
whose name I know at once the origin and 
the appropriateness. It lies on the out- 
skirts of the country over which I ranged, 
a new, half-bungalow, altogether homelike 
place, with wide verandas and a cheerful 
big brick fireplace ; with host and hostess of 
wide-open hearts and hearty voices wel- 
coming; with children who always shouted, 
"Oh, it's Uncle Arthur!" with a jolly 
ebony cook named Lily White, who knew 
what cooking meant; with Sorghum, the 



92 Hills o' Ca'liny 

saddle horse, and Kubelik, the terrier, and 
Billy Possum, the pig. 

Perhaps you may think all that an in- 
congruous mixture, but so my memory 
warms over the varying factors of a time 
of rest, when often, footsore and heart- 
sore, I fell, an unexpected but always wel- 
come guest, out of the darkness into the 
cheer of Mr. George's arguments and Lily's 
tea biscuits. Mis' Dosia's ringing laugh, 
and Son's enthusiastic tales of the superior 
acuteness of his Billy Possum. 

It was often with a sort of terror that 
I looked forward to a night that must be 
spent among strangers, with wearied body 
and fagged mind put still to the stretch to 
entertain and teach; and when but a few 
miles intervened between me and the House 
of Rest, temptation more than once was 
yielded to, and I found myself ensconced 
before a leaping fire, with muscles and 
mind relaxed, and keen enjoyment usurp- 
ing the place of disciplined care. 



The House of Rest 93 

Mr. George could talk. He had his en- 
thusiasms, and he had his antipathies: 
loose him on either, and it took only a 
judicious word, now and then, of encour- 
agement or opposition to furnish an hour's 
profitable entertainment. His enthusiasms 
had a fairly wide range, from his prize 
potatoes to William Jennings Bryan; his 
antipathies were mainly the result of his 
enthusiasms. 

For one thing, since the Peerless Leader 
had been thrice defeated, the country had 
almost gone to the dogs, but there was 
growing hope, through Democratic gains, 
that righteousness might yet survive. 
Surely this glorious land of liberty must 
be saved! Turn the rascals out, and let 
good men come in! 

But here I had also my enthusiasms, or 
rather my convictions. '^ You may legis- 
late forever,'* I told him, '* and put the best 
possible laws on the statute books, but that 
will not make men good." 



94 Hills o' Ca^liny 

" Of course/' he agreed, " so long as 
you keep such grafters in office as are there 
now. WeVe got to have good men, and 
it's your duty and mine to go to the polls 
and put them in." 

'' And when you have them in," said I, 
" the old world will jog along just about 
the same. At first, the new broom may 
seem to sweep clean, but a broom can never 
sweep darkness out. YouVe got to go 
behind votes and laws and leaders to get 
regeneration." 

" You're a pessimist! " cried Mr. George. 
" If everybody acted as you talk, where do 
you think this country would land? We'd 
have more and more rotten legislation and 
law enforcement, forever." 

'' That depends," I replied. '' I'm not 
advocating a remedy, but I am repudiating 
the quack cure-all legislation. The fact is, 
I don't expect to see the whole world saved, 
but out of its ruin I expect to see honest, 
stalwart souls saved." 



The House of Rest 95 

"You're a pessimist," iterated Mr. 
George, "a sure enough pessimist!'' 

I balanced the term on the point of my 
criticism. " A pessimist," I argued, '' a 
pessimist is a man who sees only the evil 
and looks for no great betterment. If it's 
cloudy, he knows it's going to rain unless 
the wind changes; if he feels a tickling in 
his throat, he knows he's going to die of 
tuberculosis unless he gets a change of 
climate; if stocks are going down or the 
tariff is going up, he knows things are go- 
ing to smash unless his favorite is elected 
to Congress. No; I'm not a pessimist. I 
have a bigger remedy for all this graft 
and corruption than a political candidate. 
If I were attempting to get a good crop by 
scratching my land with a bull-tongue 
plow, should I blame you for refusing to 
employ the same method when you had a 
gang plow and traction engine at home? " 

*' If you've got a better remedy, it's time 
to trot it out," said Mr. George. 



96 Hills o' Ca'liny 

" I look to a more glorious reformation 
soon than Democratic or Republican ever 
hoped for/' I continued. ^^ Fm at work 
every day to help a little in bringing it 
about; and the reason I don't go into poli- 
tics to make men good is because I'm too 
busy on this other plan/' 

" If you men don't stop talking politics," 
broke in the patient Mis' Dosia, '' I'm go- 
ing to take my work upstairs, where you'll 
not be bothered with the click of my 
needles." 

'' What is your plan? " asked Mr. 
George. 

'' The plan of salvation through Jesus 
Christ," I answered; ^* the glorious news 
of His soon coming and of His present sal- 
vation. When the gospel of Jesus Christ 
gets into the heart, it does what no law 
and no officer of the law can do. The fact 
is, there is no other moral regeneration. 
And a further fact is, the larger the num- 
ber of us who get to work in this campaign 



The House of Rest 97 

with heart and soul, the sooner will come 
the advent of our Lord Jesus Christ, and all 
the good things you hope for, and more." 
'' I don't doubt you are right there," 
said Mr. George. 

I had always regarded Mis' Dosia as a 
Shunammite, but it took longer to reveal the 
philanthropist in Mr. George. The revela- 
tion began, doubtless, with his tolerating, 
nay, his welcoming of myself; but it was 
more noticeable to me in an exhibition of 
one of his pet aversions. Mr. George was 
a Tennesseean, and his wrath sometimes 
overflowed upon the Tarheel. The poor 
mountaineer, he declared, was proud with- 
out reason, and exacting without reliabil- 
ity; he would work only so long as he was 
starving and could not get credit; he would 
plight his oath to do a thing for you, and 
straightway forget or evade his promise; 
he was easily persuaded, and he as easily 
backslid. 



98 Hills o' Ca'liny 

'' To tell you the truth/' he said one eve- 
ning in a burst of candor, *^ the reason Fve 
dreaded to see you locate anywhere around 
us here is, I knew you could go down to 
the works and talk Bible to my men, and 
gat two thirds of them to keep Saturday, 
and they'd leave me. You'd organize a 
flourishing church and Sabbath school and 
missionary society. But you leave them 
for three months, and then come back to 
Sabbath school, and you wouldn't find a 
one. They'd all be down in the pit blasting 
rock. Well " (in deference to my remon- 
strance), ^^ maybe not the Sabbath school 
superintendent, but he'd be standing 
around with his hands in his pockets, whis- 
tling, ' I Wish I Was One of the Boys 
Again.' " In fact, in Mr. George's opinion, 
the mountaineer was a great deal of a 
child, for whom none but a paternal gov- 
ernment would ever answer. And despite 
his explosions of righteous indignation, 
that, I discovered, was the kind of govern- 



The House of Rest 99 

ment he was largely administering to his 
own men. 

'^ There's that Zeb Bean/' he confided one 
evening, ^' got a wife and six children ; sick 
for two months this fall, and the company 
carried him along through it all. But when 
he gets well and earning again, what do 
you think he does? — Buys little gewgaws 
to hang round his children's necks when 
they're needing shoes, and runs an account 
at the company's store for cornmeal and 
bacon, while, if he gets a dollar, he dives 
straight for a blind tiger. And I told him, 
^ Now, Zeb, you've got to let liquor alone, 
and you've got to walk straight if you don't 
want to get fired.' Comes Christmas, and 
Zeb pipes up for a dollar. ^ What for? ' I 
says. ' Want to celebrate,' he says. ' It's 
Christmas, and I got to celebrate, ain't I? ' 
' You'll celebrate by keeping sober and re- 
ducing your account,' I told him. But what 
does the fellow do? Somewhere or other 
he gets hold of a dime, buys that much 



The House of Rest 101 

black powder, and fills a wagon skein with 
it. His slow match proves a fast one, and 
he blows two fingers off his right hand, 
and lays himself up for another six weeks. 
And now who's going to take care of him 
this time, Vd like to know? '' 

'' 0, you are, of course! " said his wife, 
with a quiet little laugh. Mr. George's 
wrath collapsed into a mellow chuckle, that 
bespoke repentance for his indignation, 
indulgence for his erring employee. '' I 
reckon I am,'' he said. For were not these 
the sheep, and he the shepherd? 

Next morning over the frozen ground 
came to the door a barefooted little boy on 
some primary errand that I did not learn. 
But he was brought in to the fire, and 
warmed and fed and talked with, and laden 
for home with a basket packed by Mis' 
Dosia, with substantial and delicacies. 

'' How's your papa, son? Tell him to 
hurry up and get well. Tell him, ' Don't 
worry, everything will be all right,' " cooed 



102 Hills o' Caainy 

the stern magnate of last evening. The 
barefooted boy was a son of Zeb. 



In the roomy chamber where I always 
slept there is tacked on the wall, among 
other numerous ornaments, a little mes- 
sage in antique type, before which I stop 
every night, ere I blow out the light, and 
I read it over and over again: 

" I seek in prayerful words, dear friend, 
My heart's true wish to send you, 
That you may know that, far or near. 
My loving thoughts attend you. 

" I cannot find a truer word, 
Nor fonder, to caress you; 
Nor song nor poem I have heard 
Is sweeter than, God bless you! 

*' God bless you ! So I've wished you all 
Of brightness life possesses; 
For can there any joy at all 
Be thine, unless God blesses? 



The House of Rest 103 

" God bless you ! So I breathe a charm, 
Lest grief's dark night oppress you. 
For how can sorrow bring you harm 
If 'tis God's way to bless you?" 

Then I can never forbear a little journey 
around the room in my stocking feet, stop- 
ping here to read an inscription that 
speaks to the heart, and there to gaze 
again into the eyes that surely were en- 
dowed by something higher than the 
painter^s brush. There is a Dutch boy in 
colors ; there is a great medallion of a little 
boy and a little girl, both golden-haired; 
there is a quiet woodland scene, the sub- 
scription of which recalls, while its seren- 
ity repudiates, its author — ^^ There is a 
pleasure in the pathless woods." 

Just behind the shoulder of the north 
wall's projection, my eyes meet the He- 
brew priest's benediction: 

" The Lord bless thee, 
And keep thee: 
The Lord make His face to shine upon thee, 




Photo by Eugene J. Hall 

In and Out Among the Trees 
" I fell to noting the leaves that carpeted the trail." 

104 



The House of Rest 105 

And be gracious unto thee: 

The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee, 

And give thee peace." 

And not too far away is '' The House Beau- 
tiful," which climbs its steps from faith 
to '' Where there is God, there is no need." 
Sometimes I must lie upon by bed for 
a time before the light goes out, and take 
a more distant view. There, just opposite, 
the great emancipator broods in his rough 
armchair, with face and pose whose mel- 
ancholy is more than relieved by their in- 
spiration of settled will for duty. There 
are several pictures, beautiful, restful, of 
mother and babe. And there is the curious 
print that, close at hand, reveals a quiet 
fiord on the Swedish coast, with a steamer 
belching up a marvelous volume of black- 
smoke that fades into whiteness toward 
the top ; but that at a distance transforms 
itself into a tonsured monk, with ago- 
nized face uplifted in his devotions, or with 
his sheet of penciled music crumpled be- 



106 Hills 0^ Caliny 

fore him, seeking inspiration at the organ. 
At last I fall asleep in the murmur of 
my own thoughts, repeating the benedic- 
tion framed on my table: 

" Sleep sweet within this quiet room ; 

Nor let, whoe'er thou art, 
Rebuking thought of yesterday 

Disturb thy peaceful heart. 
Nor let tomorrow mar thy rest 

With thought of coming ill: 
Thy Maker is thy changeless friend; 

His love surrounds thee still. 
Forget thyself and all the world; 

Put out each feverish light. 
The stars are shining overhead ! 

Sleep sweet ! Good night ! Good night ! " 



I am sitting in my armchair, reading my 
morning chapter, when little Miss Sis Hop- 
kins comes down. A shy ^* Good morning,^' 
and she circles around my chair, and 
finally ends at the center table with her 
hands on a book of stories. 



The House of Rest 107 

'' Here's this same old book we had last 
night/' And picking it up, she comes over 
to my chair. '' Mamma told me not to ask 
you to read another story, 'cause you did 
read to us last night," she says, sugges- 
tively, but adds, as an afterthought, '' We 
can look at it, though," and snuggles up in 
my lap. " What's this? " 

'' Why, that's Boblets, the meadow 
mouse." 

^^Uh, huh!" 

'' Would you like to hear about him? " 

'' If you want to read, why, of course." 

Good-by, dear House of Rest. Good-by, 
my friends who make its name. Outside 
I face again a bitter, biting wind. And 
my prayer for you is that in a brighter 
clime you may find waiting for you a more 
glorious Beth-shan. 




Off to Market 

This is not Christy, but one of Christy's kin or kith 
108 



Christy, Kith and Kin 

I SHOULD have liked to introduce you to 
Christy in a romantic setting; for there 
is romance about Christy. If I could have 
chosen, as the romancer can choose, the 
place and time for the introduction to my 
little highland heroine, it would have been 
on a glorious May morning, down at the 
spring, where the guarding oaks and pop- 
lars pay for their lives with their cooling 
shadows; and Christy, straight as a willow 
withe, and clad in a simple, straight-fall- 
ing, homespun dress, her bare feet glisten- 
ing wet with the early dews of morning, 
and her voice a-lilt like the lark's in a 
gladsome matin of the hills — but alas! 
it was not on a May morning, it was not 
at the spring, it was not in a homespun 
dress nor in bare feet, that I met Christy. 



110 Hills o' Ca'liny 

It was in a soggy November twilight, it 
was in a slab-sided lean-to kitchen, and it 
was in a cheap print dress, and with very 
neat shoes on her feet, that I first saw my 
little highland lass. And Christy was fry- 
ing pork. 

I was belated that night. I had gone 
two miles out of my way for a visit to 
this home to which I had been recom- 
mended; the fear of the strange was upon 
me, and my jaunty front was hiding a 
quaking heart as I stepped within the door 
and called for Mr. Page. The woman at 
the kneading trough (for so, in memory of 
Israel, I call their big, oblong wooden bread 
bowls) replied that he was not yet home; 
he had gone to Asheville to take his boy 
to the Farm School, but he might be back 
at any minute. 

Then I asked if I might stay overnight. 
There was a visible hesitation in the reply : 
the woman kneaded and punched her dough, 
and pulled a biscuit or two from the mass. 



Christy, Kith and Kin 111 

shaped them, and put them into the pan; 
and I think she said something, but I do 
not know what, for I had begun to look 
at Christy, by the cookstove. There was 
something reassuring in her attitude, some- 
thing certainly I could not hear, for she 
was silent; something I could not well see; 
but something that somehow I felt. It 
was a welcome, conveyed, perhaps, by the 
honestly curious but kindly glances she di- 
rected at me, glances that seemed to say, 
" You are from the great, wide, wise, out- 
side world; I should like you for my 
friend/' She was not bold, nor was she 
afraid. In her the shyness of the moun- 
tain child was minimized, the courage and 
independence intensified. And little does 
Christy know how she, in her fearless 
friendliness, diffused comfort in the heart 
of one she thought so much wiser and 
stronger and bolder than herself. 

I did not know then how much Christy 
reigned a queen in her father's home; but 



112 Hills o' Ca^iny 

it seemed to me that somehow her sense of 
self-possession, and welcome, and her in- 
nocence of shame at poverty, communi- 
cated itself to her mother; for I heard at 
last the woman's relenting tones saying 
we might wait and see what Mr. Page 
would say. And pressing my little advan- 
tage, I got her own consent, and then a 
smile from Christy. 

There are some children whose smiles 
are illuminations, sunbursts of angelic 
beauty. Such a one I have always to greet 
me when I come home ; when Ronald smiles, 
his sober, quizzical little face is trans- 
formed into all that I know of an angel's, 
having in it sympathetic understanding, 
depth of quiet humor, the fervor of abun- 
dant and all-embracing love. And I have 
seen that rare smile on the faces of other 
children. It is not the monopoly of good 
children, but it does belong always to re- 
served children, whose silent thoughts go 
wandering knight-errantly through the 



Christy, Kith and Kin 113 

castles of story and the mystic forests of 
imagination; to them, moreover, whose 
spirits are warmed with the sunshine of 
universal brotherhood. And such was 
Christy's smile. 

We sat that night around the open fire 
(for Mr. Page had quickly given his wel- 
come to the stranger), and by its light, 
aided by a flaring lamp without a chimney, 
we talked of the coming Kingdom and the 
truths that are preparing a people for that 
Kingdom. That talk began, after some 
desultory conversation, upon my telling 
the children stories of the Bible. There 
were five of the children: Craig, a boy of 
fourteen summers, — and so older by two 
years than Christy, — a girl of nine, an- 
other boy of five, and the baby of two 
years. 

Now I can never tell stories well to chil- 
dren unless they are in my arms or at my 
knee, and I sought to gather these to me. 
But they, except the oldest, were gathered 



Christy, Kith and Kin 115 

about Christy, the baby in her arms, and 
scarcely could I at first detach them from 
their magnet. Their eyes went wide, how- 
ever, with the wonder of the stories. And 
I watched their eyes. All but two pair of 
them were the usual eyes of the mountain 
child — the Celtic blue or the Saxon gray. 
Christy's were brown, so dark a brown as to 
be almost black, a beautiful velvety black, 
straight-seeing, fearless, but trustful. And 
now that in the fitful light I could see her 
features better, I marked other foreign dis- 
tinctions. Her lips were redder in con- 
trast with her darker skin; her nose had 
an indescribably delicate aquilinity that 
gave her face a touch of hauteur, which, 
denied by her eyes, was erased only by 
her rare smile. She, like the others, lis- 
tened to story after story with interest, 
but in her face I read not merely recep- 
tion, but acquisition: she would use those 
stories afterward. Not that the children 
had never heard any of them; Mr. Page 



116 Hills 0^ Ca^iny 

was a Baptist deacon, and the children all 
went to Sunday school; but the Bible has 
ever a freshness if it comes from the story- 
teller's lips. 

It was plain that Christy was not only 
queen, but almoner of the household. 
'' Christine " she called herself, and so her 
mother called her. Whether this was a 
new-made dignity of budding womanhood, 
or an arrogation of babyhood, I never 
knew; but to the children and their father 
she was still '' Christy.'' It was Christine 
who put supper upon the table and cleared 
away the dishes and superintended the 
afterwork; it was Christine who was re- 
sponsible for the baby; and it was Christy 
who found her father's pipe, braided her 
sister's hair, put away her little brother's 
hat and shoes, and, along with me that 
evening, wrestled with her older brother's 
arithmetic examples. 

It was in respect to matters related to 
this last subject that I found the father 



Christy, Kith and Kin 117 

voluble. And so it was everywhere: the 
schools were '' no 'count," the teachers 
were incompetent either in discipline or in 
learning, there was so much opposition to 
special tax that often the school could hold 
no more than four months ; and though the 
district might tax itself for a long time, 
so dominated was the system by politics, 
and its victim, or tyrant, the county super- 
intendent, that they might be cheated in 
the lottery of getting a teacher. But I 
learned to take these complaints with con- 
siderable allowance, reflecting from my 
own experience that the schooFs constit- 
uency, having a thousand eyes, often could 
not see with the single eye of the educator ; 
and learning, moreover, a little of actual 
conditions by observation and talk with 
teachers. Out of my meager investiga- 
tions came at last the conviction that while 
there is just cause for complaint about short 
school terms, lack of good system, and in- 
competence of teachers, yet the teachers, 



118 Hills 0^ Ca^iny 

as a whole, so far from being to blame, are 
the only element of hope in the situation. 
Various ones of them I have watched at 
work in the little country schoolhouses ; and 
with but one exception, I have felt they 
were earnest, helpful, hopeful workers, 
doing better than I could do under the con- 
ditions and with the knowledge they had. 
The teacher body of the mountains, indeed, 
presents itself to me in Jacob's figure of 
Issachar, — ^^ a strong ass couching down 
between two burdens '' — the burden on 
the one hand of popular criticism and its 
own knowledge of needed improvement, 
and on the other of inadequate training 
and poverty. The teacher who is employed 
for only four months in the year at twenty- 
five or thirty dollars a month — what can 
he do to perfect his education? His year 
is broken into one third of teaching and 
two thirds of anything else. If he sacri- 
fices himself for the sake of teaching school 
four months, for eight months he must find 



Christy, Kith and Kin 119 

whatever offers in order to support himself, 
and sometimes a family. He can hold no 
permanent position of a clerical nature, and 
almost his only resource is the mountain 
farm. He cannot afford to take a thorough 
normal training ; or, if he does win through 
that, his services are in demand in more 
remunerative positions. So far as the 
public school is concerned, the prime requi- 
site for its betterment is more money. Yet, 
in the comparative poverty of the country, 
much more per capita is devoted to school 
purposes than in more densely populated 
and wealthier communities. 

This problem of the government school 
makes the opportunity of the private Chris- 
tian school. The establishment of small 
self-supporting schools in these needy com- 
munities, operating under conditions like 
those of the people about them, and train- 
ing free these children, not merely in sec- 
ular knowledge but in the precious truths 
of the last gospel message, will be rewarded 



120 Hills o' Ca^liny 

finally with manifold the results of less per- 
manent agencies. 

It was nearly two years before I again 
reached Christy's neighborhood. Then, one 
day, I stopped at the Smoky Hollow school- 
house, and waited until the close of school 
to talk with the two teachers, husband and 
wife. The recitations went on, but back 
in the seats, among the fifty-odd pupils, I 
heard my name buzzing ; and no sooner was 
school dismissed than from the group gath- 
ered about me, I heard one clear voice say- 
ing, '^ How are you, Mr. Spalding? " I 
singled out the dark-haired, clear-eyed girl 
who had spoken. Her features were 
vaguely familiar to me, but I could not 
place her nor speak her name. Yet in the 
face of that cordial greeting I was ashamed 
to confess my forgetfulness, and I hedged 
distractedly. '' Why, Fm glad to see you," 
I said. And then some prevaricating mem- 
ory told me she belonged to a family six 
miles away, over in Brushy Creek Valley. 



Christy, Kith and Kin 121 

'^ And do you come away over here to 
school? " I asked, to show that I was really 
acquainted with her. Her fine eyes clouded 
with a haze of disappointment. '' Why, 
don't you know me? " she said, '' I'm 
Christine." 

Abashed out of my self-possession before 
this slip of a girl, I gasped, '' yes, indeed, 
I know you," and wondered what lame ex- 
planation I might offer for the crime of 
forgetting Christine. I determined, wisely, 
to make none. '^ I'm going down to your 
house tonight," I decided and at once de- 
clared. 

Again came the flash of that rare smile. 
'' We shall be glad to have you," she said, 
with a simplicity yet with a stateliness that 
would have done credit to a grand dame of 
France. And then, on the instant, I knew 
whence came those eyes, that dark waving 
hair, that olive skin, those fine nostrils, that 
delicately curving nose: she was of Hu- 
guenot blood, a reversion to type that could 



122 Hills 0^ Ca'liny 

but faintly be traced in her mother's faded 
lineaments. 

A few minutes afterward I overtook her 
and several companions on the road toward 
home. Her little sister and brother, with 
two or three other children, hung back as 
I slackened my pace to walk with them, but 
Christy stepped along by my side, with ease 
maintaining her part of the conversation, 
which the others soon eagerly joined. "What 
did we talk of? — whatever the road or 
irresponsible association of ideas suggested ; 
holidays, and black walnuts, and stained 
bare legs, and school whippings, and 
Craig's new mule, and goldenrod, and 
working the road, and Michigan sleigh 
rides, and all such things. 

"Do you like watermelon?" asked 
Christy. 

" Yes, indeed,'' I said, with a memory of 
the lowland Sweetheart melons with which 
I had but recently been surfeited. 

" We have a fine one at home, down in 



Christy, Kith and Kin 123 

the spring house/' she said, '' When we 
get there, Fll go and cut it for you.'' 

" Were you saving it for something? " I 
asked; for I knew that fine watermelons 
are hard to grow in the mountains. 

'' I think we were saving it for you," 
she said, and again the smile. 

At the gate was Craig, going to milk, 
He, too, knew me, and smiled a welcome. 
'' ril go with you," I volunteered; and we 
passed back down the road to the pasture 
bars. Two cows with scanty udders came 
up for the mash that awaited them. He 
knelt beside one, with a quart cup in one 
hand, the other free to milk, after the cus- 
tom of the land. '' You take that there 
young Molly," he said, '' she won't kick as 
long as she's eating." 

Thus warned, and remembering the sar- 
casms of Lars at home on the subject of my 
slow milking, I threw away my hat, tucked 
my head in front of Molly's flank, and 
raced against fate with both hands. Short 




A Mountain Shepherd 

Little enough have I said of Christy's kin. I would have 
told you of Eichard; of Pete, dark browed under 
the froAvn of Forge Mountain." 



124 



Christy, Kith and Kin 125 

race ! Molly was not in the habit of giving 
more than three quarts at a milking. 

'' You shore can milk," said Craig, '' I 
never done it that-a-way." And I stood in 
humble pride at the subtle compliment. 
'' How well might Lars," I thought, ^^ take 
lessons from this gentleman." Ah, well, 
blind human nature will love its flatterer 
rather than its critic! 

That night the father was away at a 
lodge meeting, and my evening, begun with 
stories for the children, was cut in two 
by the retirement of the mother and the 
younger ones. The latter half I spent with 
Craig and Christy. How I enjoyed that 
evening ! Quietly attentive, respectfully 
eager, they listened, and they questioned. 
Their schoolbooks furnished the starting- 
point. Out of their reader — Somebody's 
Fifth, it seems to me — I picked one or two 
selections to read to them, until at last I 
came upon that Tennysonian lyric by Sid- 
ney Lanier, best-loved poet of the South: 



126 Hills o' Ca'liny 

" Song of the Chattahoochee 

'' Out of the hills of Habersham, 
Down the valleys of Hall, 
I hurry amain to reach the plain. 
Run the rapid and leap the fall, 
Split at the rock and together again. 
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide, 
And flee from folly on every side, 
With a lover's pain to attain the plain, 
Far from the hills of Habersham, 
Far from the valleys of Hall. 

*' All down the hills of Habersham, 
All through the valleys of Hall, 
The rushes cried, Abide, abide! 
The wilful water weeds held me thrall, 
The laving laurel turned my tide, 
The ferns and the fondling grass said. Stay, 
The dewberry dipped for to work delay. 
And the little reeds sighed. Abide, abide. 
Here in the hills of Habersham, 
Here in the valleys of Hall.'' 

The wizardly beauty of the poem was 
enmeshing their souls, these far-away heirs 
of Celtic bard and Frankish troubadour; 



Christy, Kith and Kin 127 

their shining eyes were fixed upon mine 
whenever I raised them, until the last 
stanza, with its lesson of unselfish service, 
was completed: 

" But 0, not the hills of Habersham, 
And 0, not the valleys of Hall 
Avail : I am fain for to water the plain. 
Downward the voices of Duty call — 
Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main. 
The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn, 
And a myriad flowers mortally yearn; 
And the lordly main from beyond the plain 
Calls o'er the hills of Habersham, 
Calls through the valleys of Hall." 

'' Did you ever hear Sidney Lanier's 
^Ballad of the Trees and the Master'?'' 
I asked them. '' No; " and so I repeated to 
them that simple, beautiful, wonderful little 
pastoral that the angels must have whis- 
pered to the gentle poet: 

" Into the woods my Master went, 
Clean forspent, forspent; 
Into the woods my Master came, 
Forspent with love and shame. 



128 Hills o' Ca^iny 

But the olives, they were not blind to Him, 
The little gray leaves were kind to Him, 
The thorn tree had a mind to Him, 
When into the woods He came. 

" Out of the woods my Master went, 
And He was well content; 
Out of the woods my Master came. 
Content with death and shame. 
When Death and Shame would woo Him last. 
From under the trees they drew Him last, 
'Twas on a tree they slew Him — last. 
When out of the woods He came." 

And then we talked. 0, rare is the op- 
portunity when a boy^s heart and a girFs 
heart are open wide as those were then! 
And I can but believe that God's Spirit was 
touching their hearts there in the corner by 
the rough old fireplace, and that some day 
the seed planted that night will spring up, 
and will bear its fruit. 

But space, closing in, shows no mercy; 
for I was minded to tell you of others. 
Little enough have I said of Christy's kin. 



Christy, Kith and Kin 129 

and nothing of kith, the great fraternity so 
closely tied in blood and friendship, recall- 
ing the clan of the Celt. I would have told 
you of Mamie, jolly, self-reliant, and ca- 
pable; of the two unknown boys on Bear- 
wallow's slopes, playing in solitude at stalk- 
ing Indian or hunting bear (I could only 
guess at the game, for intrusion would spoil 
it) ; of Pete, dark-browed under the frown 
of Forge Mountain, and hungering for a 
'' chance; " of Richard, whose rough hands 
would strip fodder for three days more 
to get the book his indifferent or frugal 
father refused. And ah, how many more! 
The children of the mountains, joyous, 
happy, free, are like the children every- 
where, save only, perhaps, in this, that 
many of them know of a world outside, 
great, mysterious, vague, that holds a stu- 
pendous '' chance; " and into all their eyes, 
it seems to me, has crept the yearning for 
that vague unknown. These are the chil- 
dren that I love, with the yearning, pity- 



130 Hills o' Ca'liny 

ing love a father, chained by poverty, easts 
unavailingly forth to the hungry ones he 
cannot feed. They are too many, dear 
Lord, for the five loaves and the two small 
fishes. Shall not the miracle be wrought? 
And among the happy ones, in Thy great 
day, I want to see Christy; yea, not her 
alone, but — Christy, kith and kin. 




Nature in Her Glory 

" It is a beautiful country up there under the 
shadow of Bearwallow Mountain." 



132 



The Summer People 

My personal experience with '' the sum- 
mer people'' I admit is very slight, too 
slight to enable me to gain or give any just 
appreciation of their character. A few of 
them I have known as guests in the home 
of a friend; some I have talked with here 
and there in my journey through the coun- 
try; and one I met on the eve of her depar- 
ture for home, whose efforts as a Christian 
worker have inclined me to the highest 
opinion of the class. 

'' Class,'' I said, but there are many 
classes among them. They are the summer 
people; in class they range from clerk to 
millionaire, from gentlefolk to boors. Who 
are the summer people? They are the ones 
who have made '' The Land of the Sky " 
the playground of the nation. Serious play 
sometimes it is, with stakes of life and 



134 Hills o' Ca'liny 

death ; for the bracing air and the beautiful 
hills and the glorious skies have called to 
the ill in body and mind to come and learn 
to live. And again, the play is mere daw- 
dling, the listless search of the unhappy idle 
for a new condiment to put zest into life. 

I can never forget a simple scene one 
day, up on Brushy Creek. It is a beautiful 
country up there under the shadow of Bear- 
wallow Mountain, a land and a sky that 
ought to call with the Maker's voice to the 
sick in mind. And I had a book that spoke 
the Master's interpretation of nature, the 
glad and the serious lessons of the sower 
and the reaper ; that used the lure of fisher- 
man and merchantman to limn the pictures 
of heaven ; that spoke to the bride and the 
bridegroom and the bridegroom's friend. 
The gladness and the seriousness of the 
book were in my heart ; for I had told them 
many times. 

I was passing over familiar ground; for 
I had been this way before, but not when 



The Summer People 135 

the summer people were there. As I came 
around a turn of the road by Jeff Nicholas 
new house, I saw a group upon the lawn 
close to the side of the road. There was a 
little daughter of the household, a knicker- 
boekered boy, a young woman in white, and 
an older woman, perhaps forty. Forty had 
been her years, but she was old, old with 
the woe that centuries have perfected. I 
greeted them. The younger woman bowed, 
a little superciliously; the older woman let 
her eyes fall. They offered no objection to 
hearing me tell of the book, beyond the 
statement that they did not wish to con- 
sume my time to no purpose. 

But as I talked and turned the pages, I 
watched them. The mocking eyes of the 
young woman in white at times grew lu- 
minous with sympathy, the sunshine and 
clouds of new emotions and old passions 
flitting back and forth across her face. But 
the older woman sat immobile, her counte- 
nance expressive of settled gloom. Her fea- 



136 Hills 0^ Ca'liny 

tures had once been handsome, beautiful 
perhaps, but in them now I read the records 
of wasted energies, disappointed hopes, 
weariness of life. Twice only she lifted her 
eyes to mine; they were dark, blue like the 
twilight sky, but dark, dark with the pen- 
cilings of brow and lashes, darker with the 
lines of care and dissipation, darkest with 
a mental gloom that I shrank from looking 
into. She said no word; she left to others 
comment and answer. Bright sunshine of 
thought or lightning flash of warning from 
the book, alike left her unchanged. For 
the most part, her eyes were fixed on the 
distant hills, until, as I watched her, from 
the background of my thoughts there came 
to stand out clear and distinct, as though 
caught from her face, certain words I had 
read: '^ Men sat unsolaced, and with long- 
ing eyes looked for the coming of the De- 
liverer.'^ 

The group were waiting for the postman. 
He came before I left. The letters, eagerly 



The Summer People 137 

hailed by the younger ones, were listlessly 
fingered by the older woman, and passed 
with a monosyllable or two. I went on my 
way with a grief in my heart that could not 
be spoken, a wondering grief that craved to 
know its cause, and was met only by the 
sphinx of the somber-eyed, unsolaced wo- 
man. She was one of the summer people. 

I stopped next day for dinner with 
friends, where I had stayed overnight more 
than once two years before. Their home, 
a simple farmhouse, was overflowing with 
visitors from the lowlands. The tall, white- 
bearded, grave man who was the head of 
the house, took his pipe from his mouth to 
speak his welcome, along with his open 
hand; two of the sons came forth to greet 
me; and the mother, busy in the kitchen 
where I found her, turned with hearty wel- 
come to " Brother Spalding.'' 

The summer people were everywhere: 
rustic seats, shady arbors, croquet grounds, 
held many of them; and on the veranda 



138 Hills o' Ca'liny 

many more, young and old, were busy with 
magazines and cards. The card game was 
interrupted by the host just long enough to 
permit introductions; it could not wait 
another minute. The magazines, dog-eared 
and dirty, were evidently doing unhappy 
service until they should be relieved by 
later numbers. A little group of four or 
five persons, however, appeared to have no 
special interest; and after brief conversa- 
tion, I offered to show them my book. 

A flickering interest showed in several 
faces. What kind of book was it? One tall 
man (whom all the rest called ^' profes- 
sor") peered over my shoulder while he 
exclaimed, '^What^s the name of it? 
' Christ's Object Lessons! ' That's enough 
for me ! '' and betook himself in haste, with 
his newspaper and cigar, to the other end 
of the porch. But, evidently fearing he had 
been hasty, possibly discourteous, he added 
from his safe distance, ^^ Not that I mean 
any offense; it's all right for those who 



The Summer People 189 

want that kind of matter; but Fm not in- 
terested. Show it to the ladies.'' 

For the first time in my experience, I 
felt indignation rising, not because of boor- 
ishness shown toward myself, but at the 
thought that a teacher (one who, as I af- 
terward learned, was the head of the city 
schools in one of our States' capitals) 
should be so ignorant of true education as 
to despise the words of the Master of his 
profession. But I would have scorned to 
allow an echo of his spirit. I turned to 
the ladies, courteous and kindly, who lis- 
tened well, but appreciated little. 

At dinner I sat at one end of the table, 
in close proximity to several young persons, 
who, boisterous enough before, seemed to 
feel an oppressive shyness after the " say- 
ing of grace," which the dear, good, moth- 
erly Methodist hostess had called for from 
" Brother Spalding." Yet we talked to- 
gether pleasantly enough of common things, 
innocuous if not highly edifying, and there 



140 Hills o' Ca'liny 

was a pretty grace in the young girls' 
voices and manners, and a pleasing gal- 
lantry in even a twelve-year-old youngster 
who threw a delicate but robustly boyish 
compliment to his hostess's daughter. My 
heart went out to them, treading with 
thoughtless confidence the social path their 
elders were marking out for them, even as 
their feet had unquestioningly followed, the 
day before, the trail their guide had taken 
up Bearwallow's steep slopes. Immediately 
after dinner they were dancing in the hall 
in front with an orchestra composed of a 
very good piano and an execrable French 
harp which gallant Mr. Twelve-year-old 
would persist in playing. 

There were twenty or thirty persons 
there, but not one of them (aside from the 
native family) had, so far as I could dis- 
cover, a serious thought for this day or 
eternity's day. They were summer people 
bent on pleasure; their motto, ^^ While we 
live, let us live." 



The Summer People 141 

It would be manifestly unjust to brand 
all the summer people with the unfavorable 
impression such an experience begot, even 
though there were other experiences that 
deepened it. True culture certainly I have 
met in nearly all of the few others with 
whom I have had a longer acquaintance. 
Men and women of serious mind and ear- 
nest purpose I have met here in the moun- 
tains, from various Southern States — cler- 
gymen, teachers, nurses, and others who 
have deep interests, and I must believe, 
consecrated lives, at their homes. I feel 
the glow of warmth in the memory of one 
lady from New Orleans whom I met at a 
Bible class the evening before she left for 
home. 

The Bible class was one formed by her- 
self for the training of Sunday school 
teachers. She had attended the local Sun- 
day school during her vacation, but had 
been asked to teach, had felt the great need 
of better methods than were there used, and 



142 Hills o' Ca'liny 

had invited her class and any others who 
wished, to take up the Sunday School Un- 
ion's systematic training course for teach- 
ers. Whether her manners were offensive 
to the simple leaders, or whether it was (as 
they claimed) her theology which troubled 
them, I do not know; but it seems she 
speedily found herself the center of one of 
those experiences of which Saxe writes 
feelingly — 

" To be mixed in parish stirs 
Is worse than handling chestnut burs.'* 

She was said to be an Episcopalian, but 
'the textbook she was using, I discovered, 
was published by another church. At any 
rate, this woman had gathered about her 
from the Sunday school a little class, — 
some very intelligent, others more back- 
ward, — and had trained them well in the 
work they were doing. Every week on 
Wednesday evening she met them in the 
schoolhouse, and patiently and enthusias- 
tically drilled them in reasons for their 



The Summer People 143 

faith and in Bible history and geography, 
and now was about to begin upon principles 
of teaching. Her work had been well done, 
as her class showed in review, and it was 
a grief to me, that because of early removal 
myself, I could not accept her and their in- 
vitation to continue the work after her 
departure. She was one of the summer peo- 
ple, bent, not upon pleasure, but upon work- 
ing for God. And, whether tactfully or not, 
she had been endeavoring to use her talent 
and her vigorous personality in service for 
Christ. 

But observation compels the belief that 
the majority of the summer people are 
neither religious nor philanthropic. They 
have come here for rest, recreation, and 
pleasure. Their influence upon the moun- 
taineer is by no means highly beneficial. 
He has long been out of the current of the 
world's progress ; he is a century, two cen- 
turies, behind the times. In some respects 
it is a favor and a credit to be behind these 



144 Hills o' Ca^liny 

times. The enterprise and capital of mod- 
ern America might be employed in the de- 
velopment of the mountains with advan- 
tage to the mountaineer, but the wealth 
they have made for their possessors is little 
blessing when brought into the mountains 
to minister solely to pleasure. 

The tourist, of course, may not con- 
sciously debauch his simple mountain 
brother. He may even have an amused, 
tolerant interest in him; but the tender 
mercies of the idle rich are cruel. The 
contrast in standards of living, from 
pinched poverty to free-handed plenty, 
from honest and poorly paid toil to opu- 
lent leisure, has a demoralizing effect upon 
the mountaineer. And when he finds him- 
self able, by the multiplication of sleeping 
places and the slaying of many chickens, 
to coax from the pockets of the visitors in 
a few weeks more money than he has seen 
for many years, he is confronted with a 
great temptation to make himself into the 



The Summer People 145 

servant, the lackey, despised by his fore- 
fathers, who fled to the mountains that 
they might make their sons independent 
and free. The roads, after three hundred 
years, have followed the truants to the 
mountains, and are paving a golden way 
back to the halls of service. 

And when the mountaineer gets his view 
of the times, not through the effort and the 
business of the great world, but through 
its relaxation, which is too often its dissi- 
pation, he is not enlisted in its worthy 
ranks of industry, but rather sucked into 
its train of parasitic camp followers. 

Nevertheless, the Christian worker, who 
is no social providence, but simply a sav- 
ior of souls, must hail the advent of the 
summer people as another field for his ef- 
forts. They make, it is true, no consciously 
needy charge. The service for which they 
ask is mostly temporal and little spiritual; 
they would patronize rather than be con- 
verted. Nevertheless, both because they 

10 



146 Hills o' Ca'liny 

complicate the problem of helping the 
mountaineer, and because they also have 
sin-sick souls, they do present a field for 
Christian effort. And though unconscious, 
their appeal is not the less a challenge to 
the Christian to be at his work. The 
mountain worker, joining hands with what 
helpful forces he may find among the vis- 
itors, must work for them as well as for 
his native people. And he may even find in 
this effort a wider, though it cannot be 
a nobler service; for the truth that finds 
lodgment with the summer people may 
be spread throughout the country and 
throughout the year. 

The fact that all this mountain country 
fills up yearly with tourists and health 
seekers from almost every part of the 
Union, is a challenge to find and use the 
best means, all possible means, to reach 
their various classes. 

As Capernaum, with its caravans, of- 
fered Christ an opportunity He did not neg- 



The Summer People 147 

lect, to make Himself known to far-distant 
parts, so " The Land of the Sky ^' offers 
an opportunity to send the last message 
near and far. And by what means did 
Jesus call attention to the truth? Cannot 
His methods suggest a possible way here? 
My thoughts turn back to the sad-faced 
woman by the roadside, pass over the light, 
giddy throng that comes between, and set- 
tle at last into an assurance that there is 
a healing of mind and soul and body that 
the pilgrims to this land are craving. And, 
influenced by these thoughts, I catch in 
fancy even here the echo of those words 
spoken in that city on the sea, " I will; be 
thou clean ; '' '' Damsel, I say unto thee, 
arise; '^ and, '' I say unto you, I have not 
found so great faith, no, not in Israel." 




© Boston Photo News Co. 

Beauty, Beauty, Everywhere ! 

" Water in plenty there is in the mountains, from bubbling 
sjirings to garden j)lots of white water lilies and cattails." 

148 



The Lake Country 

'' I RECKON hit air purty," said Cal 
Strong, courteously. He stretched a long 
leg toward the fire, then suddenly with- 
drew it and leaned forward to bathe his 
brown, hairy hands in the warmth of the 
fireplace. '' I reckon hit shore air purty; " 
then, after an interval, again, '' I reckon 
hit air.'' 

Plainly it was time for me to come to 
the rescue : Cal's rhetoric had failed at the 
extreme limit of his imagination. I had 
foolishly been expatiating upon an unfa- 
miliar, yea, an unimaginable subject. But 
if there had been no excuse, there had at 
least been a reason. Reasons, sometimes, 
we must all admit, are poorer sticks to 
lean on than excuses. So it was tonight. 
If Cal had given me any excuse for telling 



150 Hills 0^ Ca^liny 

him unattractive tales about blue waves 
wimpling in the fairy breezes, about boat- 
ing and bathing, and sailing and skating 
and ice yatching, and bob fishing and duck 
hunting, — ah, possibly that was the clue ; 
for Cal had been yielding reminiscences of 
hairbreadth escapes from bear and cop- 
perhead. 

But behind that doubtful excuse lay the 
reason. A lake-country boy, I had sought 
in vain in the beauties of forest and hill 
for the final touch, the acme of perfection 
— the blue lake. Water in plenty there is 
in the mountains, from bubbling springs 
and laughing rills to cascades and flowing 
rivers, with now and then a garden plot 
of white water lilies, or of cat-tails where 
the redwing flutes; yet, like the homesick 
Greek, I had to cry, '' But where is the 
sea? '' 

'' I don't suppose,'' I said to Cal, by way 
of changing the subject, ** I don't suppose 
you-all need any lakes up here, though. 



The Lake Country 151 

You have so much of everything else that 
belongs to heaven, that one more gift 
would make men blaspheme because they 
had to die/' 

" I reckon so/' said Cal, pleased, per- 
haps, at the compliment, if he understood 
it. But, modestly deprecatory, he added, 
'^ The pneumony air mighty bad, though/' 
Then, as an unimportant afterthought he 
added, ** But we-all hev lakes, too/' 

" Where? " I exclaimed incredulously. 
It was as if an Atahualpa had said to a 
Pizzaro, wondering at his childish passion 
for yellow metal, *' As for that, we have 
gold mines a-plenty." 

Never say that the Anglo-Saxon stock 
has not the dramatic instinct; or was it a 
strain of the Celt in Cal that caused him, 
after an amused glance at my eager, ques- 
tioning face, to pause for a distinct minute, 
to aim an amber jet accurately at the tip 
of old Gordie's nose on the hearthstone, to 
shift his quid to the other side, then, with 



152 Hills o' Ca^liny 

a sidelong glance to assure himself that 
the tide of impatience was at its flood, to 
interrogate me thus : ** I reckon you-all hev 
heard of Toxaway? and Fairfield? and 
Sapphire? and Osceola? and Kanuga? ^' 

'' Fm very new to the country/' I con- 
fessed, uncomfortably wondering what 
reparation, in the code of the mountains, 
one gentleman should offer another for 
speaking, out of a vast ignorance, in dis- 
paragement of the resources of that oth- 
er's country. 

"Them's lakes," said Cal. " Ef you 
want to see 'em, I kin tell you whar they 
be, though I never taken a ja'nt that-a- 
way myse'f." 

And now, gentle reader, that I have 
seen, I shall describe, that lake country of 
''The Land of the Sky;" for I do not share 
the contempt of Mr. Cal Strong, though I 
have become a mountaineer. And in this 
I am not outlandish ; for I find that neither 
do those highlanders who dwell near the 



The Lake Country 153 

lakes, share the prejudice or the indiffer- 
ence of Mr. Cal Strong and his lakeless 
congeners, but they are not a little proud 
of the distinction the lakes confer upon 
them. 

The lake country at present lies between 
parallels 35° 10' and 35° 30', and merid- 
ians 82° 20' and 83° 10', though, for a 
reason that may at last appear, these may 
not be the ultimate bounds of the lake 
country. Of anything so limpid, so ceru- 
lean, so enchanting, as a lake, I do not like 
to give the metes and bounds, to fix its 
local habitation, and lay it down in the 
guidebooks. Commend to me, rather, Poe's 
irresponsible and untraceable geography — 

" Down by the dim lake of Auber, 
In the misty mid region of Weir." 

But I give these facts of latitude and lon- 
gitude as a concession to the demands of 
the modern scientist, who is so apt to ac- 
cuse the poet and the nature lover of fiction. 



154 Hills o' Ca'liny 

In my boyhood I lived in all the famous 
lake regions of the earth : in Michigan and 
Maine, in Caledonia and Erin, in Sas- 
katchewan and the basins of the West, in 
Westmoreland, in Switzerland, and on 
those shores in the Dark Continent that 
border on the Mountains of the Moon. In 
some of these I lived in person, in others 
by the proxy of books. With the voyageur 
and the trapper I had paddled through the 
spruce-lined roadways of the North; with 
the Incas I had shouted against those 
mailed robbers who gazed over the waters 
of Titicaca upon the golden temple of the 
sun; I had beached the boats and braved 
the kings and built the shops on Nyanza, 
with Speke and Stanley and Mackay; I 
had sprung with Tell from the barge of 
the tyrant Gessler, and had manned with 
Arnaud the boats on Lake Leman that ush- 
ered in " The Glorious Return.'' And I 
had lived in the bright days and the dim 
nights that dwelt of old on Galilee — 



The Lake Country 155 

'' When Peter, girding his fisher's coat, 
Went over the nets and out of the boat, 
To answer, ' Lovest thou Me?'" 

But of all the countries and all the scenes 
that may claim relationship to the lake 
country of the American highlands, for me 
the lochs and firths of old Scotland hold 
first place; because, firstly, they lie in a 
land that is girt by hills, and seamed with 
glens, and shrouded sometimes with mists 
(howbeit it hath not the sun of this land) ; 
and lastly, because their people are our 
people, and their God our God. Not alone 
in Glen Alpine, but also in the coves of 
Chunn and MacGillivray, does the shrill 
whistle of a Roderick Dhu call the clans- 
men to the gathering; and not alone in the 
free kirks of Dumfries and on the marshes 
of the Clyde, but also in the log churches 
and on the circuit of the itinerant preacher 
in the American highlands, is raised the 
voice that demands the law and that chants 
the song of freedom. For the blood of the 



156 Hills o' Ca'liny 

Highlander and the Covenanter runs in the 
veins of these Americans, and whatever of 
Huguenot and English Dissenter have min- 
gled therewith, has been inoculated anew 
by the elixir of the hills. And it is my 
hope, as I think it may not unreasonably 
be my expectation, that in these fastnesses 
of rock and hill and lake, shall be held to 
the end, amid the reel and the shock of the 
last great battle for truth — shall be held 
with the fervor of a Knox, the fortitude 
of a Macbriar, and the broad, calm lead- 
ership of a Chalmers — the faith that re- 
quires and that makes heroes. 

It was on a Sunday morning that, kiss- 
ing the wife and bairns good-by, the writer 
set off with Lars for the upper lakes. 
Forty miles along the French Broad and 
its headwaters, our engine pulled us gal- 
lantly, though at the end, it is true, wheez- 
ing and sniffling and backing and bucking 
against the steep grade that presents the 
last barrier to Lake Toxaway. 



The Lake Country 157 

We saw through the trees the gleam of 
blue water, and hastened to alight and 
start toward the lake. There in the midst 
of her green hills she la^^ broad and bright, 
and smiling in the sunshine; for Toxaway 
is the queen of the mountain lakes. Some 
of them, I confess, I have been tempted, 
despite their charm of clear waters and 
gently caressing wavelets, to dismiss from 
the catalogue of lakes, because of their 
trifling size ; but Toxaway, even though be- 
littled by her surrounding mountains, is 
really a lake. Twenty-four miles must one 
tramp if he would go around her, and, at 
that, a twenty-four miles that do not lie 
in the compass of every day's march. For 
while green meadows and lovely dales and 
open woods cluster around and cling to her 
like gentle maids and loving children, be- 
hind her tower, like stanch men-at-arms, 
Big Hogback, and Little Hogback, and Cold 
Mountain, and Panthertail. (How the 
crude Saxon loves to slap his side of bacon 









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^^H 


■B" ■ 




^M 


^^ttiil 




^^^^H 


I^^^^V?' 




^^^^B 


^^m 




■ 


1 


fe* V.fM'''v' 


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be 



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be 



^ 



The Lake Country 159 

down upon the fair linen of poesy! Hog- 
back against Toxaway! Cannot some one 
soften it into Gaelic or Cherokee?) 

I led Lars around the road to a huckle- 
berry hill at the end of the lake, where we 
sat down to feast. My eyes were hungry 
for expanses of blue, for the shades of 
indigo and green and purple, and the 
clear white, of a deep lake; keen for the 
lights and shades, for the playing of the 
waters with the wind — the little ripples 
that coquette with the wandering breeze, 
and the whitecaps that greet the boisterous 
wind. To gaze at the mingled coloring of 
the dark banks and green trees and the 
azure of the sky in the ultramarine of the 
lake, was food to my hungering senses 
then. 

But Lars insisted that feasting had some 
reference to substantials, and I allowed 
him to open the lunch. Lars is a man of 
wisdom in things in which I am a fool. 
He can discourse learnedly upon hackney 



160 Hills o' Ca'liny 

and Percheron, on sweeny and spavin and 
poll evil, on point and pedigree; and in 
woodcraft he is past master, from the art 
of the lumberjack to the knowledge and 
skill of the builder. And so it comes 
about that to Lars the cattle upon a thou- 
sand hills signify so many hundreds of gal- 
lons of milk and so much per pound upon 
the hoof, and the trees that tower toward 
heaven lack only so many board feet of 
making a complete house. These subtleties 
of computatious imagination are beyond 
me, and I must be content with no more 
than appreciation of the broad piety they 
inspire. ** The Lord made the earth and 
reckoned out its fulness,^^ quoth Lars; 
*' how thankful we should be that the for- 
ests will not give out before the Lord 
comes." 

" Do you notice,'^ I say to Lars, ^^ that 
color scheme of the woods across the bay? 
The blue fades off into the reflection of the 
grassy bank. Those sourwoods above and 



The Lake Country 161 

dwarfed dogwoods below deepen the green 
not too much to spoil the contrast of the 
dark hemlocks above/' 

" Hemlock's getting scarce," says Lars. 
'' Pine has gone soaring the last fifteen 
years, because the Wisconsin and Michi- 
gan supply is giving out; and hemlock, 
which took its place, is beginning to climb 
now. That clump of hemlock over there 
is worth a lot of money, if its owner had 
enterprise enough to cut it, float it across 
the lake to the railroad, and ship it out." 

" Enterprise and ownership often fail to 
combine," I solaced him. '' If I were the 
owner now, I should not have the enter- 
prise to chop down those trees; and if I 
had the enterprise, I hope I should not be 
the owner." 

Toxaway was in one of her moods. 
When we arrived, her fair face was smiling 
with sunshine, but now the air was grow- 
ing thick with haze, and even as we sat 

there, the far end of the lake was hidden 
11 



162 Hills 0^ Ca'liny 

under a scudding squall. We took up our 
burdens, and prepared to move forward, 
for we had a sixty-mile tramp ahead of 
us, and the farther we anticipated evil 
weather, the better would be our journey. 
Around a twist of the road, we came out 
upon the embankment that confines the 
waters of the lake within the valley. For 
here it must be confessed of Toxaway, as 
of all the lakes of the mountain country, 
that they are made by the hand of man. In 
the Southern Appalachians there are no 
natural lakes, though such pools as Lulu 
on Lookout Mountain have received that 
name. But when a hundred-yard dam be- 
tween projecting hills can create such a 
lake as Toxaway, neglect to throw it across 
is a reproach to the genius of the hills. 
Nowhere, perhaps, is the opportunity bet- 
ter or more frequent than here in the 
'' hills o' Ca'liny '' for the easy construc- 
tion of lakes that rival in charm the best 
of Scotland or of Switzerland. And who 



The Lake Country 163 

cares whether the cause be the ancient 
forces of nature, or the recent exertions 
of man! Out on the blue expanse the 
waves roll just as lustily; deep in the nar- 
row straits and inlets the water weeds up- 
lift their graceful forms, and the fishes 
play in the shallows, just as well as if 
their home had been there four thousand 
years. Long life to the new lakes of the 
mountain country, and (since there can) 
may there be many more of them! 

Eight miles farther on our way lies the 
winding, serpentine Lake Sapphire, which, 
since it needs it, has received the lauda- 
tions of its friends to a greater extent 
than have its more worthy companions. 
'' The beautiful Sapphire country '' was a 
phrase that had rung in my ears for many 
months; and for that beauty I now sought 
as we trudged along. 

But Sapphire and its country were un- 
fortunate that day. Scarcely had we left 
Toxaway before the storm clouds emptied 



164 Hills o' Ca'liny 

themselves upon us; and, drenched with 
rain and clodded with mud, we alternately 
trudged with dogged wills, and rested in 
puddles by the wayside for a breathing 
spell. Occasionally the thick clouds would 
lighten, but only to crowd closer together 
again, until at last, seeing they could not 
utterly prevent our progress, they gave it 
up as we neared the new waters; and with 
some feelings of gratitude we came upon 
Lake Sapphire and its village. For Sap- 
phire shares with the lower Kanuga the 
distinction of being a club lake, with neat 
cottages upon its banks and an outpost of 
civilization in the form of a crossroads 
store. 

The lake itself, though viewed under a 
somewhat favoring sky, was disappointing. 
Narrow and winding, it looked like a great 
blue serpent lying there, and to my view 
(biased, perhaps, by the untoward circum- 
stances of the day) it needed all the boasts 
of its friends to give it rank among its 



The Lake Country 165 

fellows. But one crown of beauty it did 
have. Hidden away in an inlet, around 
the bend of a high bank, lay anchored out 
in the very center, a fleet of snow-white 
lilies. I blessed the little lake for the joy 
of its one beauty, and took up with Lars 
the journey that meant more drenchings. 
From '^ the beautiful Sapphire country '' 
we began an uphill journey. The last of 
the trio of lakes, Fairfield, lies a thousand 
feet above Sapphire, and the road is not 
too good. Especially was this so, as by 
some mischance, perhaps through taking 
a cut-off path, we found we had selected 
'' the old road,^' which runs, sometimes a 
mere trail, over steeper grades and stonier 
ways than the lower highway. We 
thought, indeed, we must have lost our 
way when the almost trackless path led us 
into a barnyard, where an ancient shed 
stuck out one corner to the very wheel ruts, 
like the shoulder of an interfering half- 
back. 



The Lake Country 167 

It was time to inquire, and I opened a 
gate and went up to the house, a ram- 
shackle building whose only evidence of 
life was a lazy blue curl of smoke from 
the stone chimney. For a minute or two 
my rapping brought no response. There 
was a hush like that of death within. But 
at last persistence was rewarded : the door 
creaked open an inch, and the suspicious 
face of a girl was thrust into the crack. 

My smile must have reassured her that 
I was no revenue officer, for she threw the 
door open wide, to reveal a woman, hastily 
pinning a loose wrapper about her as she 
stumbled forward, followed by three or 
four more curious children. When they 
found we only wanted to know the way, 
they became voluble in explanations, and 
urgently asked us inside. If it had not 
been for that burdening fifty miles before 
us, I should gladly have accepted the invi- 
tation, for I was curious to know the cause 
of that hushed reception. But with thanks 



168 Hills o' Ca^liny 

for the directions given, Lars and I pressed 
down the stony road. 

Fortune favors the brave. Just as we 
came to a maze of crossroads, a mile far- 
ther on, we were overtaken by two cur- 
tained carriages, whether stage or private, 
we cared not to know. With the main 
object of learning our way, but also with 
a faint hope of being invited to ride, we 
stopped the foremost and asked for the 
road to the lake. The young, black-haired, 
black-eyed driver surveyed us with evident 
disapproval. 

''Which lake?'' He thought we might 
be going back to Toxaway. 

'' Lake Fairfield.'' 

"Straight ahead!" said he, and himself 
drove straight ahead. We surmised that 
he was bound thither himself, and followed 
meekly as the two vehicles dashed down 
the hill, a crowd of young people in the 
hindermost shouting and screaming with 
laughter. 



The Lake Country 169 

The rain was only occasional now, and 
we tramped on with sturdy hearts. Here 
began the steepest part of the road, a part 
which was to last till we reached the higher 
ground on which lies Fairfield. Very soon 
we overtook the laboring horses of the 
hindmost vehicle, and before another half 
mile had been traced, we came upon the 
first carriage, whose taciturn driver had 
met his Waterloo. He had blocked his 
wheels, and was tugging at the harness. 
A trace had broken. With the idea of giv- 
ing comfort if not help, I hailed him cheer- 
fully, '' Broken down, have you? '' 

^* We have,'^ he said precisely, and 
turned his bent back to us. 

I perceived at once that I was dealing 
with no Tarheel. No inhabitant of the 
hills would be so studiously, politely disre- 
spectful. And he was no Yankee, for his 
fingers moved too unskilfully. Perhaps he 
was from Charleston, I thought, remember- 
ing the story an Ashevillian had told me: 



170 Hills o' Ca^liny 

Miss Charlestonia was visiting her 
friends in North Carolina, and endeavored 
to inform their ignorance as to the strata 
of society in the Palmetto State. " To be 
accepted without question at home/^ she 
said, '^ one must be from the city. Which 
city? There is only one. If a person is 
introduced as being from the city, it is 
Charleston; the rest of the State is the 
country.^' 

'' But how do you introduce one who 
is from outside the State? '' her friends 
asked. 

" Oh, my dears,^' said she, ^' in that case 
we are too polite to mention it! '' 

And yet, when I came to reflect upon it, 
I was ready to find a home for my friend, 
the black-eyed driver, in the one city that 
is more exclusive still; for his action ac- 
corded more fully with the code held by a 
Boston blood, in the recent street-car strike 
in that city. A pedestrian was striding 
along, in a hurry to reach his down-town 



The Lake Country 171 

office, when he was accosted by the driver 
of a powerful car that slid up to the curb 
beside him. 

'' I say, my dear fellow, were you going 
down town? '^ 

'' Yes/' 

'' May your name be Smith? " 

^^ Jones, sir/' 

'' Are you not related to the Kirby- 
Smiths in any way? '' 

'' No, sir/' 

" You have no cousins among them? '' 

" None that I know of.'' 

'' And you have no acquaintance in their 
set? " 

'* I don't know them." 

''Ah, well, I beg your pardon," sighed 
the young man, '' I thought I might give 
you a lift in my car, but of course if 
you have no connections, it is impossible." 
And his motor purred him away. 

In this case, however, we left the mule 
motors purring at a standstill, while we shot 



172 Hills o' Ca'liny 

on ahead. Up, up, up, steeper and wilder 
grew the way. The deciduous trees gave 
way to pines, and then to great hemlocks, 
magnificent in girth and height, filling 
the narrow gulches and towering over our 
heads along the road. 

They who go to Fairfield go through 
grandeur to come to somber glory. For 
that little lake, lying in the embrace of the 
great mountains about her, is the very per- 
sonation of the weird conception of Poe's: 

" The skies they were ashen and sober, 

The leaves they were crisped and sere — 
The leaves they were withering and sere ; 

It was night in the lonesome October 
Of my most immemorial year. 

It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, 
In the misty mid region of Weir, 

It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, 
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir." 

It may be the sun shines sometimes upon 
this crystal gem of a lake, and it may be 
it transforms it into brightness, but not so 



The Lake Country 173 

was it on that day when we stood there. 
The skies were ashen and sober, and the 
little lake, perfect in its rounded beauty 
as the full form of a maiden, was clasped 
round by the somber forests and the moun- 
tains behind that sprang from its very 
surface. Had I had the christening of 
this lake, I would have called her Perseph- 
one, so queenly did she sit in these dark 
realms of Pluto. 

Towering up in its noble or its ugly gran- 
deur, from the far side of the lake sprang 
a thousand feet into the air the great, bold, 
curving forehead of Bald Rock. Scarcely 
a sprig of green, caught in some crevice, 
was there to be seen on his gaunt gray 
surface. Though other mountains, higher 
than himself, rose around him. Bald Rock, 
the sinister genius of the place, impressed 
his personality upon his fellows, and dom- 
inated the scene. We stood there at mid- 
day, and watched the dim shadows coloring 
the waters of the pool, while imagination 



174 Hills o' CaUiny 

caught the morning's scene, when the mists 
uprise to wave their incense smoke before 
the face of Old Baldy, and the night's, 
when the last splendors of the sunset glo- 
rify the shameless rock while the shadows 
in contrast lie deeper upon the tarn be- 
neath. For the first time I stood in Poe's 
world, and with me ever I shall carry in 
a glow of love, where once was only fear, 
the memory of 

"... the dim lake of Auber 
In the misty mid region of Weir." 

For though we left it, the lake and its 
massive guardians followed us. All up 
the steep way that came thereafter, our 
hearts bore the impress of that picture; 
and when, after two hours of upward 
winding and toiling, which Lars insisted 
meant ten miles, we came out upon an emi- 
nence and beheld over against us, and 
seemingly nearer than before, the great 
bare face of Old Baldy, it would have taken 



The Lake Country 175 

little to convince us that we had been still 
wandering " in the ghoul-haunted wood- 
land of Weir." 

Far out over the crowded heights, and 
through their gaps, we gazed. Here just 
below us lay beautiful little Fairfield, 
crouched at the feet of her giant lords; 
there to the right wound the sinuous Sap- 
phire; and far away to the east stood the 
mountains, Panthertail and Hogback, 
guarding Toxaway, queen of the waters. 
We stood at the back door of the land ; lin- 
gering a moment before we should go on 
into the wilderness, we let our eyes wander 
over the way our feet had so laboriously 
trodden; and, because we had loved in the 
time we had lived, it was with a feeling 
of sadness as well as with a memory of 
joy that we bade farewell to the lake coun- 
try of the " Land of the Sky.'' 



Children of the Rechabites 

*' They are children of the Rechabites/' 
said Brother Marshall, as we stood watch- 
ing, in the group of children out hoeing 
the corn, a young woman of eighteen and 
her pair of brothers, two and four years 
younger, '' they are children of the Recha- 
bites. What their father taught them be- 
fore he died, they would no more think of 
wilfully disregarding now than of giving 
up their lives/' 

I was interested in these children be- 
cause I had had a little hand in helping 
them along the road, though I had not be- 
fore seen them. And now, at the commen- 
dation of their teacher, with the Scrip- 
tural picture it evoked, my heart warmed 
toward them anew. 

Now Jonadab, their father, long years 
before, having come from a godless family. 



178 Hills 0^ Ca^liny 

was not a Christian, yet he was of a 
serious cast of mind. And having taken 
as wife a maiden whose piety was deep 
and strong, he learned from her and from 
her godly father, how to find the peace that 
passes all understanding. And together 
these two dedicated their children, one by 
one as they were born, to the cause of 
Christ. They were not rich; far from it. 
A little mountain farm of thirty acres, 
with a cabin home, was their all ; and their 
few years of married life were spent in 
toil and frugal living. The mother sick- 
ened and died when Lucy, the eldest, was 
but five years of age, and the baby, Robert, 
was scarcely weaned. 

" I don't remember my mother much,'' 
Lucy said to me, '^ except her blue eyes, and 
when she kissed my father. But I think 
she taught him to be a Christian. Always, 
after she died, he would gather us children, 
morning and night, and read the Bible to 
us, and teach us to pray." 



Children of the Rechabites 179 

Alone for most of the years, Jonadab 
trained his children in the love of God and 
in the habits of industry. He was with 
them till Lucy was twelve years old, and 
Leonard and Robert were boys who had 
begun to shoulder the burdens of the farm. 
During the last year (for he saw his death 
creeping upon him) he doubled his efforts 
to impress right principles on his children's 
minds. He taught them always to study 
the Bible and to pray to God for whatever 
they needed. He told them they must 
never give up the effort to get an educa- 
tion. And he warned them never to go to 
the mills to work. He had a sister in one 
of the South Carolina cotton mills, and he 
knew the reasons for commanding his chil- 
dren never to yield to the attraction of 
those burning lamps of ready wage that 
so attract the impecunious mountain moth. 
But when he was dead, his father took 
the children. I do not think his name was 
Rechab. Unworthy at least he was to be 



180 Hills 0^ Ca'liny 

the father of such a son, because he had 
not a soul that could rise above his daily 
food and plenty of chewing tobacco and 
leisure. Unworthy, I said? Yet, had he 
come also into the fortune of such a wife 
as was his daughter-in-law, or had the 
messenger of God come as he should into 
his early home, who knows but he might 
have been the worthy progenitor of the 
children of the Rechabites? 

But Lucy, Leonard, and Robert were to 
him only three hungry mouths to feed, 
three insistent backs to cover and heads to 
shelter, with what credit might be induced 
from three pairs of hands that the hard 
taskmaster. Poverty, had taught to labor. 
His little farm bore small fruit to his in- 
different labor; and so it came about that 
he listened when his daughter-of-the-mills 
insisted, '' Why should you have to work 
for them children, when they could be 
earnin' money for you? Bring 'em down 
to the mills.'' 



Children of the Rechabites 181 

And so at last he told the children that 
they should ^' go south." But they remem- 
bered their father's command, and con- 
tended for it earnestly. '' Every morn- 
ing," said Lucy, " I would beg grandpa not 
to take us to the mills, for our father had 
said we should not go; and every night we 
prayed about it." But the old man, with 
the prospect of leisure and ready money 
from his grandchildren's labor, would not 
listen, and he carried them off to the mill 
country. 

Three years they were there, yet not 
long in any one place; for, like most of the 
mill people, the old man had the moving 
mania. He would hear, perhaps, the ru- 
mor of some mills fifty miles away that 
paid higher wages, and he would prepare 
to move; and move he would, against the 
protestations of his granddaughter. " I 
knew we could never get along well by 
moving constantly," she said to me, " and 
we always found that if there were higher 



182 Hills o' Ca'liny 

wages, there were also higher prices in the 
company stores, where we had to trade our 
scrip/' 

The old man did not work, but the chil- 
dren did; that is, the two older ones; for 
the youngest was too much under age to 
attempt to dodge the child-labor law. It 
was not hard work they had to do, but it 
was deadening to mind, and through its 
monotony fatiguing to the body, destruc- 
tive of that elasticity which is the main- 
spring of growing youth. The mill child 
suffers from vacuum rather than weight. 

Every day the sister prayed, and she 
taught her brothers to pray, that God 
would let them go back to the mountain 
country and to the farm. And at last the 
prayer was answered. Their aunt left the 
mills, went back to the mountains, and 
married; and the old man, with her influ- 
ence transferred to the other side, and 
homesick also for the hills, turned his face 
toward the Blue Ridge. 



Children of the Rechabites 183 

The children were happy at getting out 
of the mills. But on the heart of the sister 
came more heavily now that other com- 
mand of their father, that they get an edu- 
cation. For this she began to pray ear- 
nestly. Their grandfather at first carried 
them to a small farm on which was a 
gristmill he undertook to run. But he 
failed with that, and went back to his old 
farm. Now his granddaughter began to 
besiege him to send them away somewhere 
to school. In his rather passive objection 
to this, however, he had now the active 
assistance of two allies, one his unmarried 
son, who came to live on the farm, and the 
other his daughter, that same aunt-of-the- 
mills, who, now divorced after a brief 
honeymoon, was also under the paternal 
roof. 
/ " You ought to be ashamed," they said 
to Lucy, '' jist when you're a-growin' up 
to be some 'count to your pore old granther, 
to mewl about a-goin' off to school. Ain't 



Children of the Rechabites 185 

you been enough care, 'thout askin' him to 
send you off to git book larnin' an' be no 
'count? '' 

But the hope and the ambition and the 
sisterly love of that sixteen-year-old girl, 
prayer-fortified, was proof against brow- 
beating and abuse, and she kept her deter- 
mination that her two brothers, left as they 
were to her care and guidance, should with 
her have an opportunity to train for better 
service. She tried to learn of some school 
where she could find a place for three. 

Fifteen miles from her home, at B , 

she learned of an orphanage and school, 
and she determined secretly to get a place 
there, if possible. One of her aunts lived 

at a place a few miles above B , and 

she obtained permission to visit her, walk- 
ing all the way. On her way, she stopped 
at the school and applied for admission. 
They told her they were pretty full, and 
did not know that they could take her and 
her brothers in. But she pleaded with 



186 Hills o' Ca^liny 

them until they promised to consider it. 
Mrs. Armstrong, a lady living near her 
aunt^s, took great interest in her, and 
promised to see the school people and in- 
tercede with them. 

Lucy walked home, and waited hope- 
fully for some word. At last it came, 
from Mrs. Armstrong, but it was only a 
disappointment, — they could not take her. 
Worse than that, the letter, when it came, 
was captured and opened by her aunt, and 
it was through her that the girl learned of 
the disappointment. 

" What's these tricks youVe been up to 
now? '' exclaimed the vigilant guardian, 
" Been a-sneakin' off to try to git away 
from your pore old gr anther. Now git to 
work, you hussy! You cain't git away no- 
how: you got a guardeen, you want to 
know." 

But there was an unexpected result. 
When grandfather heard of it, he was 
struck with fear that the children would 



Children of the Rechabites 187 

clandestinely leave him some day, and per- 
haps also, father of a worthy son, his heart 
was touched by some sense of compassion 
and sympathy for this persistent effort of 
his grandchildren toward a goal he could 
not appreciate. 

'' Ef you children air bound to go, Fll 
try to he'p ye. Your old grandpa will he'p 
ye,'' he said. 

It was on a cold November morning that 
he presented himself at our doors to ask 
a place for his grandchildren. We were 
just starting a school a few miles above 

B . This was the first I had heard 

of these children, and little enough I heard 
then from the lips of the old man, only 
that they were orphans, and wanted to stay 
together. We counseled with one another 
as to whether we could take the children, 
but our circumstances just then made it 
seem impossible, and so I had to tell the old 
man. "But,'' said I, "I have a friend 
who is conducting an orphanage, and I will 



188 Hills o' Ca'liny 

write him to see if they cannot have a 
place there.'' 

The old man went home, his conscience 
cleared of his onerous task, and secretly 
pleased, doubtless, at his failure. He only 
told the children that there was no place 
for them, and said nothing about the pos- 
sible further chance which I had suggested. 

^' Did you begin to despair,'' I asked of 
Lucy long after, '' when the way was thus 
closed up? Did you stop hoping for an 
education? " 

" No," she answered, ^^ for God seemed 
to say to me, ' Keep on praying. I will 
help you. There is a place somewhere.' " 

And a place somewhere there was. For 
in a week or two we were able to send 
them word that the way was open for them 
to enter school. Mrs. Armstrong herself 
carried the news down to their home, 
hunted up a cousin who was a man of 
property and influence, and stirred him to 
help get the children off. 




© U. & U.. N. Y. 

From the Brow of Lookout' 

" Dear children of the mountains, I pray for you all a deeper 
knowledge, a broader experience, a fairer success, 



than vou even vet have known. 



189 



190 Hills o' Ca'liny 

And thus at last these faithful children 
of the faithful Jonadab found his faith and 
theirs rewarded. They had prayed to God 
in their need; though against their will 
they had been forced into the mills, they 
had prayed themselves out; and they had 
prayed and worked their way into the op- 
portunity for an education. Well might 
their teacher say of them, from their his- 
tory as well as from his experience with 
them, " They are children of the Rech- 
abites." 

Bright-faced, blue-eyed, with an ever- 
ready smile, they were children whom to 
see was to love. The youngest boy, quick 
of movement, swift to obey and to help, is 
a magnet drawing every one. Leonard, 
sturdy, neat, dependable, energetic, and 
impatient of delays and obstacles, has had 
a hard but valuable lesson in the checks of 
his young life. I found him at the plow, 
and talked with him of his plans. But 
though he was cheerily cordial, he had little 



Children of the Rechabites 191 

to say, and I learned more from his sister 
of his aspirations than from him. Deep 
of thought, but reticent, he makes none his 
confidant but his sister. She, one among a 
thousand women, does not fall short of 
that paragon the mother of King Lemuel 
sought for him: 

"A worthy woman who can find? 
For her price is far above rubies. . . . 
She seeketh wool and flax, 
And worketh willingly with her hands. . . . 
She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; 
Yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the 

needy. . . . 
She openeth her mouth with wisdom; 
And the law of kindness is on her tongue. . . . 
Many daughters have done worthily, 
But thou excellest them all." 

Dear children of the Rechabites, I wish 
for you, and for the many like you scat- 
tered throughout these mountains — I pray 
for you all a deeper knowledge, a broader 
experience, a fairer success, than you even 



192 Hills 0^ Ca^iny 

yet have known; that, like Joseph, upon 
your heads the blessings of your father 
may prevail above the blessings of his pro- 
genitors, unto the utmost bound of the 
everlasting hills ; and that, like the promise 
of old from the Lord of hosts, the God of 
Israel, so throughout eternity, ^^ Jonadab 
the son of Rechab shall not want a man 
to stand before Me forever.'^ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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